Newly published letters from longtime New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan reveal his efforts to popularize the word floccinaucinihilipilificationism ("the futility of making estimates on the accuracy of public data"). Read about it on The New York Times City Room blog here.
"It's easy to forget that some of the English language's most common words had real-life namesakes in living, breathing people." Life Magazine has put together a slide show of some of the most notable eponyms, from Henry Shrapnel to Etienne Silhouette. Check it out here.
The New Oxford American Dictionary has released its third edition, and in the time-honored tradition of lexicographical publicity, a sampling of the dictionary's new words and phrases has been making the rounds. Some have griped that the list "reads like a list of Twitter trending topics" that is designed "to bait bloggers, who really are obsessed with the Interweb." Is the list too preoccupied with evanescent online culture? You be the judge!Continue reading...
The folks at Merriam-Webster have been keeping track of the most looked-up words in their online dictionary this summer. At number one is Sarah Palin's refudiate, which you won't find in any dictionary (yet). Read all about it here, and read about the runners-up here.
The Oxford Dictionary of English has announced the addition of more than 2,000 new terms. Meet the turducken ("a roast dish consisting of a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey") and other new entries in the official announcement from Oxford here, and in dictionary editor Catherine Soanes' interview with National Public Radio here.
Still mulling over Sarah Palin's use of the word refudiate? Check out these two commentaries. In his Good magazine column, Visual Thesaurus contributor Mark Peters uses Refudiate-gate as an opportunity for a "Sarah Palin retrospective" here. And Geoff Nunberg argues on NPR's "Fresh Air" that the reactions to Palin's gaffe were more telling than the gaffe itself, here.
As its "Cool News of the Day," Reveries Magazine has featured the latest New York Times "On Language" column by Visual Thesaurus editor Ben Zimmer on "the iteracy afflicting Facebook, Google and others." Read more here (and read here for a previous "Cool News of the Day" tied to Zimmer's column on etymythology).