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What's a Misle?
Have you ever been misled by the spelling of a word into thinking that it's pronounced differently? Like, say, thinking that "misled" is pronounced like "mizzled"? Now you know what a "misle" is. On the Chronicle blog Lingua Franca, linguist Geoffrey Pullum investigates, inspired by a colleague's assumption that "biopic" rhymes with "myopic." Read Pullum's post here.
Word CountWriters Talk About Writing
Flash Card: The Elephant Effect
The difference between "affect" and "effect" stumps even experienced writers.
Oh, "effect" and "affect" -- why can't one of you be a noun and the other a verb? That would make life so much easier. But no, you are each a noun AND a verb and thus the inspiration for much head-scratching.
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Word CountWriters Talk About Writing
Dennis Baron's Word of the Year for 2011: "Volatility"
When the world is in a bipolar mood, we need a volatile word to capture the zeitgeist.
Dennis Baron, English professor at the University of Illinois and author of the blog The Web of Language, writes:
The Web of Language Word of the Year for 2011 is "volatility." Volatility may not be trendy like occupy or Arab Spring, but it's the one word that characterizes the bipolar mood of 2011 in everything from politics to economics. Continue reading...Language LoungeA Monthly Column for Word Lovers
Brief is Beautiful
When it comes to modern dictionary definitions, is brevity the best policy?
The Internet makes it possible to publish dictionaries containing entries of any length, in any format, that are not necessarily subject to traditional rules or conventions. So it's fair to ask: is abandoning the traditional short-form definition, along with the paper it was once printed on, a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater? Or is it a good opportunity to reinvent lexicography?
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Behind the DictionaryLexicographers Talk About Language
The Monstrous Indecency of Hybrid Etymology
There's a long tradition of disparaging words with mixed classical roots.
The word hybrid (from Latin hybrida, "mongrel") commonly refers to animals and plants of mixed lineage, and more recently to vehicles with two or more power sources. In linguistic morphology, it refers to a word formed by combining elements that originated in two or more languages. The process is called hybridization.
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Word CountWriters Talk About Writing
The Language of Cyber-Malfeasance
For every bad thing you can do with computers, there's a word to describe it.
I have only a glancing relationship with the fascinating world of computer security. But I've realized recently that even we non-experts have a pretty rich vocabulary for the many flavors of ill intent in the world of computers and beyond.
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Word RoutesExploring the pathways of our lexicon
The Origins of "Black Friday"
You can thank the put-upon Philadelphia traffic cops.
Today is the day after Thanksgiving, when holiday shopping kicks off and sales-hunters are in full frenzy. The day has come to be known in the United States as "Black Friday," and there are a number of myths about the origin of the name. Retailers would like you to believe that it's the day when stores turn a profit on the year, thus "going into the black." But don't you believe it: the true origins come from traffic-weary police officers in Philadelphia in the early 1960s.
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