September 14, 2012
Why ‘Diphthong’ is the Best Word Ever Ted McCagg is a creative director in advertising in Portland, Oregon. In his spare time, for the past five years or so, McCagg has been keeping a blog,”Questionable Skills” — the content of which consists almost entirely of drawings, some of them the bracket-style rankings that are a familiar feature of March Madness. A few months ago, McCagg began using his blog and his bracket system to answer a question: What is the best word ever? Not the funniest word or the most erudite word or the most whimsical word … but The Best Word, full stop. What if, you know, the scallawag could eke out a thingamajig that would help him select the least milquetoast morsel from our linguistic smorgasbord?  Yesterday, McCagg has answered his question. Read more. [Image: Ted McCagg]

Why ‘Diphthong’ is the Best Word Ever

Ted McCagg is a creative director in advertising in Portland, Oregon. In his spare time, for the past five years or so, McCagg has been keeping a blog,”Questionable Skills” — the content of which consists almost entirely of drawings, some of them the bracket-style rankings that are a familiar feature of March Madness.

A few months ago, McCagg began using his blog and his bracket system to answer a question: What is the best word ever? Not the funniest word or the most erudite word or the most whimsical word … but The Best Word, full stop. What if, you know, the scallawag could eke out a thingamajig that would help him select the least milquetoast morsel from our linguistic smorgasbord? 

Yesterday, McCagg has answered his question.

Read more. [Image: Ted McCagg]

2:30pm
(Notes: 197)
  
Filed under: Language News Diphthong Linguistics Words 
September 7, 2012
Um, Actually, What Your Crutch Word Literally Says About You Joe Biden said literally quite literally a lot last night in his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. […] Crutch words are those expressions we pepper throughout our language as verbal pauses, and sometimes as written ones, to give us time to think, to accentuate our meaning (even when we do so mistakenly), or just because these are the words that have somehow lodged in our brains and come out on our tongues the most, for whatever reason. Here’s our list of frequently used crutches, and what your crutch of choice has to reveal about you: Basically. You like to cut to the chase, to synopsize, to bring things down to old bottom line of what’s really, truly important. You are always downsizing, cutting the clutter, throwing out a sweater for every new one you purchase. Um. You are not very good at giving speeches, and listening to you can be painful, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a very nice person. Honestly. The frequency with which you deploy this word is inversely related to the frequency with which you are actually honest. Read more. [Image: Reuters]

Um, Actually, What Your Crutch Word Literally Says About You

Joe Biden said literally quite literally a lot last night in his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. […]

Crutch words are those expressions we pepper throughout our language as verbal pauses, and sometimes as written ones, to give us time to think, to accentuate our meaning (even when we do so mistakenly), or just because these are the words that have somehow lodged in our brains and come out on our tongues the most, for whatever reason. Here’s our list of frequently used crutches, and what your crutch of choice has to reveal about you:

Basically. You like to cut to the chase, to synopsize, to bring things down to old bottom line of what’s really, truly important. You are always downsizing, cutting the clutter, throwing out a sweater for every new one you purchase.

Um. You are not very good at giving speeches, and listening to you can be painful, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a very nice person.

Honestly. The frequency with which you deploy this word is inversely related to the frequency with which you are actually honest.

Read more. [Image: Reuters]

1:55pm
(Notes: 159)
  
Filed under: Language Words Um Like Literally Actually Apparently Honestly Seriously 
September 4, 2012
Words Invented By David Foster Wallace’s Mom D. T. Max’s highly anticipated Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (public library) is out this week, and though it lacks the captivating prose of a great biography, it has a certain encyclopedic quality that is sure to galvanize DFW fanatics.  I was delighted to find among the Max’s factlets one about words invented by Wallace’s mother, an English professor, which went on to permeate DFW’s own writing: No one else listened to David as his mother did. She was smart and funny, easy to confide in, and included him in her love of words. Even in later years, and in the midst of his struggle with the legacy of his childhood, he would always speak with affection of the passion for words and grammar she had given him. If there was no word for a thing, Sally Wallace would invent it: ‘greebles’ meant little bits of lint, especially those that feet brought into bed; ‘twanger’ was the word for something whose name you didn’t know or couldn’t remember. She loved the word ‘fantods,’ meaning a feeling of deep fear or repulsion, and talked of ‘the howling fantods,’ this fear intensified. These words, like much of his childhood, would wind up in Wallace’s work. And, indeed, it did. From Infinite Jest: Orin’s special conscious horror, besides heights and the early morning, is roaches. There’d been parts of metro Boston near the Bay he’d refused to go to, as a child. Roaches give him the howling fantods. Read more. [Image: Wikimedia Commons]

Words Invented By David Foster Wallace’s Mom

D. T. Max’s highly anticipated Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (public library) is out this week, and though it lacks the captivating prose of a great biography, it has a certain encyclopedic quality that is sure to galvanize DFW fanatics.

 I was delighted to find among the Max’s factlets one about words invented by Wallace’s mother, an English professor, which went on to permeate DFW’s own writing:

No one else listened to David as his mother did. She was smart and funny, easy to confide in, and included him in her love of words. Even in later years, and in the midst of his struggle with the legacy of his childhood, he would always speak with affection of the passion for words and grammar she had given him. If there was no word for a thing, Sally Wallace would invent it: ‘greebles’ meant little bits of lint, especially those that feet brought into bed; ‘twanger’ was the word for something whose name you didn’t know or couldn’t remember. She loved the word ‘fantods,’ meaning a feeling of deep fear or repulsion, and talked of ‘the howling fantods,’ this fear intensified. These words, like much of his childhood, would wind up in Wallace’s work.

And, indeed, it did. From Infinite Jest:

Orin’s special conscious horror, besides heights and the early morning, is roaches. There’d been parts of metro Boston near the Bay he’d refused to go to, as a child. Roaches give him the howling fantods.

Read more. [Image: Wikimedia Commons]

2:50pm
(Notes: 155)
  
Filed under: Lit Books Words Language David Foster Wallace News 
August 24, 2012
74% of Virtuous Words Are Used Less Frequently in Books Than They Were a Century Ago  Simply, fewer virtue words in books means that the concepts those words stand for are less a part of the individual and societal consciousness. “People simply do not think/talk/write about morality and virtue as much anymore,” the Kesebirs write. “The vocabulary for talking about issues of good and bad, right and wrong thus seems to be shrinking…” If we aren’t using moral words in our vocabularies, what are we using?  Read more. [Image: Flickr/Len Matthews]

74% of Virtuous Words Are Used Less Frequently in Books Than They Were a Century Ago 

Simply, fewer virtue words in books means that the concepts those words stand for are less a part of the individual and societal consciousness. “People simply do not think/talk/write about morality and virtue as much anymore,” the Kesebirs write. “The vocabulary for talking about issues of good and bad, right and wrong thus seems to be shrinking…”

If we aren’t using moral words in our vocabularies, what are we using? 

Read more. [Image: Flickr/Len Matthews]

2:29pm
(Notes: 204)
  
Filed under: Literature Language Art Morality 
August 22, 2012
How America Swears: Here’s a Map That Tracks Twitter Profanity We know, at this point, how the nation tweets. But what about how the nation swears?  The Ukrainian-based web development firm Vertaline, aiming to answer that question, scanned tweets posted from across 462 specific locations in the U.S. The team then isolated particular phrases from those tweets — one of those phrases being, yep, “fuck you,” which they tracked between July 14 and July 24, 2012. They then created a dynamic heatmap that portrays the density of the F-bomb-laden tweets as they were distributed geographically throughout each day of their date range, measured once per hour. Read more. [Image: Vertaline]

How America Swears: Here’s a Map That Tracks Twitter Profanity

We know, at this point, how the nation tweets. But what about how the nation swears? 

The Ukrainian-based web development firm Vertaline, aiming to answer that question, scanned tweets posted from across 462 specific locations in the U.S. The team then isolated particular phrases from those tweets — one of those phrases being, yep, “fuck you,” which they tracked between July 14 and July 24, 2012. They then created a dynamic heatmap that portrays the density of the F-bomb-laden tweets as they were distributed geographically throughout each day of their date range, measured once per hour.

Read more. [Image: Vertaline]

1:28pm
(Notes: 394)
  
Filed under: Maps Swearing Fuck Curses Curse words Language Linguistics Charts 
August 15, 2012
Is There a Word For 'Gay' in Arabic?

4:34pm
(Notes: 167)
  
Filed under: LGBT Language Gay Arabic 
August 8, 2012
A Dictionary of Despicable Words awesome. ”The worst word on the planet is awesome. It appears to be the only surviving adjective denoting approval or admiration. Beautiful, good, admirable, excellent, amazing—all dead as a doornail.  Of course, it’s even more dreadful when preceded by the word like, as in ‘I saw that movie last night. It was, like, AWESOME!!’” epic. “You mean to tell me epic wasn’t even considered?” Our epic mistake, man. hate. For reasons having to do with the definition. Especially ”when used in a manner such as ‘You are just so full of hate.’” hipster. See above. Read more. [Image: Flickr/Greeblie]

A Dictionary of Despicable Words

awesome. ”The worst word on the planet is awesome. It appears to be the only surviving adjective denoting approval or admiration. Beautiful, good, admirable, excellent, amazing—all dead as a doornail.  Of course, it’s even more dreadful when preceded by the word like, as in ‘I saw that movie last night. It was, like, AWESOME!!’”

epic. “You mean to tell me epic wasn’t even considered?” Our epic mistake, man.

hate. For reasons having to do with the definition. Especially ”when used in a manner such as ‘You are just so full of hate.’”

hipster. See above.

Read more. [Image: Flickr/Greeblie]

10:00am
(Notes: 157)
  
Filed under: Language Culture English 
April 12, 2012
Behold, a Terms of Service Agreement That Is Actually User-Friendly In the post herein, I (“Author”) shall endeavor to produce a collection of words (“Content”) that shall demonstrate that Terms of Service (“TOS”) agreements are the digital incarnation of the devil (“Devil”) himself. Actually, scratch that. I won’t try to prove how awful most companies’ Terms of Service are because you already know how awful they are. There are few things worse about the web than being forced to read thousands of words of dense legalese in order to upload a photo or send a message to a friend. The typical TOS — a legal necessity, but a human calamity — both enables the Internet and sucks the life-force out of it, one run-on sentence at a time.  Which is why, of course, nobody actually reads companies’ Terms of Service. Who has the time, or the patience? I may well have promised my firstborn to iTunes, or agreed to name said firstborn Twitter. No clue. Most of us impatient web users click the little “Agree” button and hope (“Hope”) that we haven’t just agreed to something crazy. But the TOS paradigm of wretchedness could be shifting. Take the photo-sharing site 500px, which features Terms of Service that are helpfully divided into columns: life-sucking legalese on the left … and plain English on the right.  Read more. [Image: 500px]

Behold, a Terms of Service Agreement That Is Actually User-Friendly

In the post herein, I (“Author”) shall endeavor to produce a collection of words (“Content”) that shall demonstrate that Terms of Service (“TOS”) agreements are the digital incarnation of the devil (“Devil”) himself.

Actually, scratch that. I won’t try to prove how awful most companies’ Terms of Service are because you already know how awful they are. There are few things worse about the web than being forced to read thousands of words of dense legalese in order to upload a photo or send a message to a friend. The typical TOS — a legal necessity, but a human calamity — both enables the Internet and sucks the life-force out of it, one run-on sentence at a time. 

Which is why, of course, nobody actually reads companies’ Terms of Service. Who has the time, or the patience? I may well have promised my firstborn to iTunes, or agreed to name said firstborn Twitter. No clue. Most of us impatient web users click the little “Agree” button and hope (“Hope”) that we haven’t just agreed to something crazy.

But the TOS paradigm of wretchedness could be shifting. Take the photo-sharing site 500px, which features Terms of Service that are helpfully divided into columns: life-sucking legalese on the left … and plain English on the right. 

Read more. [Image: 500px]

3:42pm
(Notes: 41)
  
Filed under: Law Terms of Service Tech Internet Language Linguistics 
March 29, 2012
‘Factoid’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means I had thought a factoid was a diminutive form of fact more than a derogatory one. Just last week, I used the word factoid in a recent post on the boom box’s stunning success (“That factoid is a sidenote in a 2011 paper that I stumbled on from the Journal of Management and Marketing Research,” I wrote.) The next day, I received the following email from Jim Milstein of New Uraniborg, Colorado: I wish you, and a whole lot of others, would cleave to Norman Mailer’s original coinage of the word factoid.  The suffix -oid usually means resembling, but not really a member of some category.  Examples: humanoid, planetoid.  So a factoid should properly be (and as Mailer used it) something that resembles a fact, but is not a fact.  You, and the whole lot of others, ought instead to use another word for a small probably unimportant but interesting fact.  I suggest the coinage, factlet.  In all other respects, I enjoy your writing and wish you well. My standard response to grammarian challenge is this: language changes and words acquire new meanings. Deal with it. And factoid is so damn useful, especially when you write blog posts on the web that often revolve around brief interesting facts like the boom box’s triumph. But then I started to think about it. This is not merely the stretching of the word’s meaning but rather its inversion. What Mailer meant to mean, essentially, a “fake fact” has come to mean “an interesting fact.” And his original meaning is built into the word via the suffix. Once I knew the original usage, the problem began to stare at me: factOID factOID factOID. And now, when the etymology of any word is a single Google search away, it is impossible to feign ignorance. So, join me in shunning factoid and adopting factlet. We can set this historical wrong right. Who’s coming with me? Who’s coming with me? Down with factoid! Up with factlet! This message brought to you by the Campaign to Eradicate Factoids. Follow us online at #STOPFACTOIDS2012.

‘Factoid’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

I had thought a factoid was a diminutive form of fact more than a derogatory one. Just last week, I used the word factoid in a recent post on the boom box’s stunning success (“That factoid is a sidenote in a 2011 paper that I stumbled on from the Journal of Management and Marketing Research,” I wrote.)

The next day, I received the following email from Jim Milstein of New Uraniborg, Colorado:

I wish you, and a whole lot of others, would cleave to Norman Mailer’s original coinage of the word factoid.  The suffix -oid usually means resembling, but not really a member of some category.  Examples: humanoid, planetoid.  So a factoid should properly be (and as Mailer used it) something that resembles a fact, but is not a fact.  You, and the whole lot of others, ought instead to use another word for a small probably unimportant but interesting fact.  I suggest the coinage, factlet.  In all other respects, I enjoy your writing and wish you well.

My standard response to grammarian challenge is this: language changes and words acquire new meanings. Deal with it. And factoid is so damn useful, especially when you write blog posts on the web that often revolve around brief interesting facts like the boom box’s triumph. But then I started to think about it. This is not merely the stretching of the word’s meaning but rather its inversion. What Mailer meant to mean, essentially, a “fake fact” has come to mean “an interesting fact.” And his original meaning is built into the word via the suffix. Once I knew the original usage, the problem began to stare at me: factOID factOID factOID. And now, when the etymology of any word is a single Google search away, it is impossible to feign ignorance. So, join me in shunning factoid and adopting factlet. We can set this historical wrong right. Who’s coming with me? Who’s coming with me? Down with factoid! Up with factlet!

This message brought to you by the Campaign to Eradicate Factoids. Follow us online at #STOPFACTOIDS2012.

1:44pm
(Notes: 127)
  
Filed under: Language Factoid 
March 27, 2012

The Urban Dictionary of 1811, Now Served to You Tweet by Tweet

Who doesn’t love a good old-fashioned insult? With jabs like “beetle-headed” and “royster” in your armory (“dull, stupid” and “a rude, boisterous fellow,” respectively), you can rib your pals with a touch of originality. Or, perhaps you’d like to spare your friends, but are interested in adding some 19th-century flavor to your drinking habits, and could use phrases like “pot valiant,” meaning “courageous from drink,” or to “sluice your gob,” which means to imbibe heartily.

One delightful little source for such fun with archaisms is the 1811 edition of Francis Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue — more or less the Urban Dictionary of turn-of-the-19th-century England — which has been available for free download on Project Gutenberg for about a decade now. It contains an abundance of once-current terms for all things bawdy, alcohol-infused, and foolish. But treasure trove though this may be, a long list of unknown words is not easy to digest. Dictionaries are best for looking things up, not straight reading, but when would you ever have occasion to just look up a phrase like “plump currant”?

This problem is solved by a new Twitter feed of the work, @vulgar_tongue, which is sending the dictionary’s entries into the twitter stream, bit by bit.

(Plump currant, for those curious, is defined as: “I am not plump currant; I am out of sorts.”)

Read more. [Images: @vulgar_tongue]

1:50pm
(Notes: 99)
  
Filed under: Language Insults Twitter 
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