Making words work better
National Dictionary Day is celebrated on October 16, honoring Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary that standardized American English. Dictionaries vary widely in headwords and definitions, ranging from Robert Cawdrey’s modest 2,543-word list to modern editions like the Merriam-Webster with 502,000 headwords, reflecting the evolving nature of dictionaries.
The post explores the use of chicken-related idioms to reflect human behaviors and hierarchies. It connects phrases like “pecking order” and “rulinh the roost” to social structures, while contrasting masculine and feminine traits through terms like “cocky” and “chicken-hearted.” It emphasizes the relevance of animal imagery in understanding human relationships.
On the BBC Radio 4 programme Unspeakable, Susie Dent introduced the Italian phrase "cavoli riscaldati," referring to futile attempts to revive old relationships. This phrase connects with the English idiom "to boil one's cabbage twice," both suggesting stale ideas or relationships. The discussion highlights language learning challenges and idiomatic origins.
The post explores various dog-related metaphors that reflect human social dynamics and hierarchies. It discusses phrases like "dog does not eat dog" and "dog-eat-dog world" to illustrate solidarity and competition. Additionally, it examines expressions involving rank, such as "top dog" and "underdog," while highlighting the rich imagery derived from dogs in language.
The author reflects on the metaphorical use of dogs in language, noting examples that express human emotions and behaviors, highlighting the cultural significance of these canine-related expressions in English.
How artists extend or elaborate conventional metaphors was brought home to me forcefully and repeatedly while reading a detective novel Broken Ground[ii] by Val McDermid.
Nevertheless, journalists routinely use carthorse used to describe different classes of people, especially sportspeople. Those people are mainly men, but there are exceptions.
The debate between "uninterested" and "disinterested" has a long history rooted in semantics. Traditionally, some people insist, "disinterested" meant "impartial" while "uninterested" referred to being "indifferent." However, overlapping of the two terms persists, as "disinterested" is increasingly used to denote lack of interest. Historical examples reveal shifting meanings, with both words evolving and changing over centuries. Although usage guides advocate maintaining distinct definitions, context often clarifies their meanings. Linguistic research shows these words are closely related yet uniquely interpreted in various settings.
The Advent season, starting near November 30, marks anticipation of Christ's birth and his eventual return. Initially created to engage children, Advent calendars have evolved into commercial products emphasizing consumption. The tradition of lighting candles symbolizes bringing light in winter darkness, with roots in both Christian and pre-Christian customs.
The exploration of the letter sequence -oodle- reveals a range of verbs suggesting leisurely or aimless actions: to poodle, soodle, noodle, moodle, flap-doodle, and doodle. There's a notable connection between others of these words and concepts of sound, emphasizing subdued noises or triviality.
The author reflects on their infrequent posting, contemplating the phrase "a gogo," meaning "in abundance," which originated from French. They explore its usage and historical references, linking it to Parisian nightclubs and the famous Whisky a Go-Go in Hollywood. The phrase shows resilience, still appearing in contemporary contexts.
I bet you’ll never guess from which language English borrowed penguin. Could it be from those adventurous mariners the Dutch, as their word is pinguïn? Or perhaps from a Polynesian language? Nope, neither of those. It’s most probably from… ... ... ... ... Meanwhile, English being so footloose – nay, cavalier – with parts of speech, it was inevitable that Penguin books should hatch a verb.
The species of nettle we’re talking about here is Urtica dioica. The Urtica part is a direct borrowing from the Latin urtīca, ‘nettle’, which in turn is from ūrere, ‘to burn’. That makes sense. Ouch! Nettles do make your skin feel as if it’s burning. And that burning is expressed in the prefix to the Danish word for stinging nettles, brændenælder, Danish using the same verb for ‘to burn’ and ‘to sting’. That same Latin word urtīca is also the root of the technical name for nettle rash, urticaria.
As an example of the Japaneseing aesthetic craze, in the first chapter of Oscar Wilde’s largely indigestible The Picture of Dorian Gray, the birds in flight that cast shadows across the heavy tussore silk drapes of the painter’s decadent studio produce ‘a kind of momentary Japanese effect’.
IYAM, certain plants just shout ‘Christmas’, don’t they? Well, perhaps some are a bit shoutier than others. The traditional holly, ivy, mistletoe and winterberry are on the subtler side, while on the brasher wing we find Christmas cactus and poinsettias. And there are other plants which come into prominence at this time of year, especially – for me, at any rate – cyclamens and amaryllis.
The other day, reading the very engaging Ships of Heaven, a book about a ‘curated’ [my word] selection of British cathedrals, I was struck by the author’s use of the verb ‘to monetize’. ‘Struck’ for several reasons. (Actually, four – I think – as we'll see.) First, because the context in which they used it put the Middle Ages in your face in a way that forced me ‘to sit up and take notice’.
(This is a copy of the post I wrote for Collins Dictionaries.) Look up the word Turkish in the Collins Dictionary and you’ll encounter several compounds that…
Today marks the vernal equinox. The event that ought to herald spring, despite the less than springlike weather Britain has been enjoying recently. While the meteorologists have already kicked 'spring' off to a start at the beginning of the month, today is when 'astronomical spring' begins.
Nuts feature in two types of metaphor The first is a euphemism for, ahem, testicles. Clearly perceived similarity of shape is the root or the ‘grounds’ of the metaphor. The popular Australian brand of edible nuts ‘Nobby’s Nuts’ exploits potential double-entendres to the full, particularly in an ad it used a while back: ‘Nibble Nobby’s Nuts.’
The portmanteau we’re talking about now is Twixmas. It is presumably a blend of betwixt with Christmas (whereas it could, say, have been Tweenmas, from between, but then it wouldn't rhyme, and would be even more opaque.)
As reading the examples will quickly show, most refer to women, but four examples refer to flowers or flower heads, and six more refer to plants or gardens, three of which are shown: blowsy British charm, blowsy clump of feather reed grass, blowsy double anemones.
TV coverage of Her Late Majesty's demise and the Accession of the new King has focused attention on funereal language in general. And in particular a word we rarely get to hear or read, catafalque, has intrigued people.... That set me thinking about where other language of funerals comes from. It’s perhaps surprising how many of the words listed and discussed below are loanwords. Of catafalque, bier, hearse, coffin, funeral, grieve, mourn, bury, widow(er), grave and tomb, only bier, mourn, bury, widow(er) and grave are Germanic, i.e. inherited from Old English.
As a friend recently phrased it, before that it had been possible to hold two contradictory ideas in one’s head: that the Queen was very old and that she would live forever... The extent of the affection, regard and respect for her shown by the public since her death amounts to that oxymoron, a secular canonisation. Earl Marshal is an interesting compound noun which is in a sense a microcosm of the Norman Conquest, for it unites the Old English/Anglo-Saxon eorl with the Norman French marshal.
Whereas it has pleased Almighty God to call to His mercy our late sovereign lady, Queen Elizabeth the Second, of blessed and glorious memory, by whose Decease the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is solely and rightfully come to the Prince Charles Philip Arthur George,
“One in the same” will generally be considered wrong. No dictionary recognizes it. You should avoid it and use the standard form of “one and the same.”
The verbal noun verbing is first cited a surprisingly long time ago, in 1766. But, as the OED notes, it was rare before the late 20th century...once a feature of language is visibly or vocally shunned, fatwas against it take on a life of their own.
There’s a name for this well-known phenomenon: ‘the frequency illusion’.1 It’s a cognitive bias that, in my estimation, particularly afflicts people with an unhealthy interest in how people use language – ‘language peevers’ as the uncharitable label them/us.
Recently, President Macron was photographed in a pose that in more innocent times would have embarrassed even a cash-strapped gigolo. ... Said Philip Sydney, buttoning his jerkin ‘Allow me, darling: you have dropped your merkin.’
Many journalists picked up on a single word in her resignation letter: scurrilous. The reason seems fairly obvious: scurrilous accusation is a great soundbite. That said, I can’t help wondering, cynic that I am, about a couple of other things. Did the hacks relish it because it’s not a word you come across every day? And how many people googled it to find out what it means?
Even more exciting was to discover that to regale is a loanword…from Spanish. At least, it is according to the third edition OED, which presents convincing evidence in support. Other dictionaries give a French origin.
Now, apart from the fact fortuitous is being applied to a person, which surprised me, what does it mean? Does it just mean ‘fortunate, lucky’ or does it mean ‘by a lucky chance or coincidence’? Or just 'by chance'?
I love how the silhouettes of winter trees give the skyline a jaggier rhythm, unlike the smooth legato of summer lushness. As I look out from my second-floor study, I feel airborne, level as I am with the middle branches of the beech trees in the grounds behind our house. Mercifully, they are protected by TPOs (Tree Protection Orders).
Apart from those phrases below mentioned by Mencken, bee’s knees belonged to a broad menagerie of fanciful animal phrases, including the kipper’s knickers and the cuckoo’s chin. Made endearing by its rhyme, it has survived along with the cat’s whiskers/pyjamas.
But no, it’s not a one-off. More than that: it seems to be really quite common, especially, of course, in that hotbed of solecism (😉) the US.
'Metaphor is not simply an ornamental aspect of language, but a fundamental scheme by which people conceptualize the world and their own activities.'
In an up-to-date corpus of 20 varieties of English, roadmap is about twice as common as road map. In a corpus built in 2104, the two forms were even-stevens, just about, but by the time of a 2018 corpus the ratio was 3:1 in favour of roadmap. It’s a historical process that has happened repeatedly. When Jane Austen wrote any body she did not mean 'any old cadaver'; body in her sense meant 'person'.
Learning Italian in the UK is nowadays a minority pursuit. In contrast, in the late sixteenth century to know it was an important weapon in the intellectual armoury of the elite: Lady Jane Grey, Queen Elizabeth and James VI and I’s consort, Anne of Denmark, all knew la bella lingua. John Florio, the author of the first substantial Italian-English dictionary, was a groom of Queen Anne’s chamber and enjoyed a position at court. Torriano inherited Florio’s manuscripts and published in 1639 New and Easie Directions for attaining the Thuscan Italian tongue and the year after that The Italian Tutor.
Sleaze, I maintain, possesses excellent mouthfeel – as the wine buffs and foodies would style it. Which is why it rears its ugly head with greater than average frequency – statistically speaking – in journalese. If it had a colour, it would be orange. If it had a voice, it would sound loud and brassy.
In summary: champ is older as a verb in its own right, by anything between 51 and 183 years (depending on which source you go by); ‘the dictionaries’ agree that chomp is a by-form of champ; three major English dictionaries define chomp by reference back to champ; chomp in conjunction with bit is actually recorded earlier (1645) than champ at the bit, and the subsequent OED citation for chomp also includes the word bit; and Merriam-Webster shows an intransitive chomp meaning – ‘to be eager (to do)’ – that neither Collins nor the OED does.
Fourth – and many British speakers will sigh, shake their heads, and tut-tut at this point – all of the sudden is chiefly U.S. and Canadian: in NOW it is seven times more frequent per million words in U.S. English than in British English.
We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter; and we will not fail. Peace and freedom will prevail. With those stirring,…
Bonk the verb first came into the world – in print, at least – in 1929 as a ‘conversion’ of the British interjection of the same year, which is clearly onomatopoeic. As the OED comprehensively notes ‘Representing an abrupt, typically hollow-sounding, heavy thumping noise, as of a blow, or one hard or unyielding object striking another.’ The verb in this sense is ‘to strike something hard or unyielding’ and the second OED citation shows a writer trying to convey a sequence of disparate noises: The carrier men…bonked and rattled and squerked the package through the almost too small doorway and set it down with a thump. N. Hunter, Professor Branestawm's Treasure Hunt i. 13, 1937 The sexual meaning is first recorded from 1975. Its achievement, at least in Britain, was to give people a word they could use without stammering or blushing to describe an act which theretofore could only be described by euphemism, coarse slang or the starchy language of medicine. Here instead was a ‘fun’ word: short, somewhat childish yet sooo satisfying to say. It had a sort of ‘naughty but nice’ feel, risqué, but then again, not really. And it seemed a lot less crude and slangy than s**g. Dot Wordsworth waxes lyrical about it while surprised how many of the surveyed respondents appeared not to know it (37%).
(23 & 24 of 44 commonly confused words) Overview Definitions of each word Examples History of each word Self-test Peak, peek and pique. To take a…
If you want to test yourself straight away, you can jump to a little self-test at the end of this post.
If not, what follows may help you avoid confusing them.
(17 & 18 of 44 commonly confused words) Takeaways—for busy people Beware of writing illusive when you mean that something or someone is hard to find, pin…
Continue reading → Elusive or illusive or allusive? Commonly confused words (17-18)
In which we discover that these two verbs have a common ancestor and that decry was first used by an extraordinary Jacobethan traveller, polyglot and master of disguise. He spoke French, German, Italian and Dutch, languages which helped him conceal his true identity on his travels through Europe.
Investigation reveals, inter alia, stories of Scottish ancestry, Oxbridge and public-school snobbery, Dr Johnson’s cod etymology, stomach-churning concoctions and a ‘discernment’ of homographs – I think that’s the appropriate collective noun. (H/T @tonythorne007).
[5-6 of 44 commonly confused words] (Four-minute read.) I've been prompted by a comment on this site (h/t Rick), and by seeing flaunt for flout…
Continue reading → Flaunting or flouting the law? Commonly confused words (5-6)
Dozens of words are all too easy to confuse. Their's [sic] the notorious case of its's/its, not to mention there/they’re/their, your/you're, and other obvious spelling…
Continue reading → Forty-four commonly confused English words
5-second read Some people, musicians above all, hate the use crescendo to mean a final state, as in “to reach a crescendo”, rather than a…
While Annie Lennox was keening ‘Don't ask me why’ and lamenting lost or unachievable love, the question in my mind (and perhaps in a few…
Continue reading → Anymore or any more? Does anybody write anymore any more any more?
The issue The plot makes twists and turns like a snake writhing in the desert. To tell would be to spoil, but suffice to say,…