Blogs about Language

I recently encountered the following party game: Mumbo Jumbo, based on trying to pronounce a word while wearing a mouth-stretcher. Basically, you wear a mouth-stretcher, and then you are asked to read out a phrase. …

lingthusiasm:Lingthusiasm Episode 100: A hundred reasons to be enthusiastic about linguisticsThis is our hundredth episode that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! To celebrate, we’ve put together 100 of our favourite fun facts about linguistics, featuring contributions from …

Very briefly: in entry 5 in the Waynoratu Nosferamanteau marathon, today, two anti-establishment vampires greet one another: A 1960s-style hippie on the right (peace symbol, long hair, headband, etc.), a 1970s-style Johnny Rotten punk rocker …

Let's look at two Hebrew words for clown - לֵיצָן leitzan and מוּקְיוֹן mukion. Leitzan is the more common of the two, so we'll start by examining it. It first appears in Rabbinic Hebrew, meaning …

I’ve spent a lot of time editing Wikipedia. I do it for many reasons, but one of the sillier ones floating around the margins of my consciousness is that I like to think that, by …

Solstice greetings to all! Here’s a sampling of my recently published writing: * Names of the year for 2024 (Moo Deng, Shohei Ohtani, Piper, and more) Words of the year for 2024 (BlueAnon, snoafer, X-odus, …

“Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country” is an excellent, genre-blending book, that brings together nature and travel writing, literary and cultural history, exploration of the supernatural, plus the added element of memoir. It’s filled …

For years now I have had a boilerplate rejection notice for review requests from Elsevier journals. (See the Cost of Knowledge pledge for why.) I include it here, feel free to remix and reuse: As …

I've a written a new book. It's a children's book and it's called A Riddle for a King. It's suitable for those aged between about eight and twelve, although it has been rigorously tested on …

The original: Se nell’Anno cadente ottantadoi Hai goduto quel ben, che t’augurai, Men congratulo teco, e più che mai Dal Ciel tel prego, e da’ Pianeti suoi. Guidi lunge da te Saturno i Buoi, Che …

Thomas Anour has posted a number of Bible extracts: Mark 10:13-18, John 1:1-13, and James 4:1-3. Comparing these to a published translation from 2002 (from which he sometimes diverges slightly) and to the anonymous dictionary …

We’ve discussed the Indus/Harappan script before (2009, 2017); I’m happy to report that it can now provide you with big bucks. Soutik Biswas for BBC News: Every week, Rajesh PN Rao, a computer scientist, gets …

Fundamental definition and basic discussion for comprehending the rest of this post Dalit From Hindi दलित (dalit, “downtrodden, oppressed”), from Sanskrit दलित (dalita, “broken, scattered”). Learned borrowing from Sanskrit दलित (dalita, “broken, destroyed, split”), originally …

The trends I got right—and wrong—reveal a pattern. Where do they point for the baby name future? Making predictions is fun. Facing up to the results, though, can be humbling. In the past, I’ve held …

Gilda from “Gilda“ The baby name Gilda achieved its highest ranking in 1927, thanks to shimmying Gilda Gray. But it didn’t reach peak numerical usage until two decades later: 1948: 281 baby girls named Gilda …

Back to H.L. Mencken and his book The American Language, he says in Supplement One (1945) that one of the Britishisms “that deserve American adoption” is “‘pub-crawl’ (a tour of saloons).” I’m pretty sure my …

In 1942, the literary critic and Princeton graduate, Edmund Wilson, then forty-seven, made friends with a scholar of Russian literature slightly younger than himself, Helen Muchnic. Born in Baku in 1902, Helen emigrated to the …

Books, especially novels, often quote song lyrics – typically as an epigraph and sometimes in the body text. If, that is, the author or publisher can afford it. But what of novels that quote songs …

I've been struck by the lack of election-related 2024 Words of the Year from the English dictionaries (for a list, see November's newsletter). So I am here to repair that with my US-to-UK Word of …

Hello, and welcome to 2025. Is it that time already? The possessive apostrophe (or rather, the abuse of the possessive apostrophe) is a recurrent guest star here at Shady Characters, but usually in the English …