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Say you're reading the "About Us" page on a company's website, and they tell a little story about how they came up with a common word long ago, perhaps as part of an early advertising campaign or in the creation of a consumer product. Should you believe the story? Don't count on it! That's the lesson of my latest On Language column in this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, exploring the tricky terrain of corporate etymology — or rather, etymythology. Continue reading...
When the New Oxford American Dictionary selected unfriend as its 2009 Word of the Year, Oxford University Press senior lexicographer Christine Lindberg was quick to point out that the verb long predates the Facebook era. As she explained in an NPR interview, the Oxford English Dictionary has a citation for unfriend from 1659. "I think it's a remarkable resurrection," Lindberg told NPR. "In a way, I look at unfriend as the Sleeping Beauty of 2009 words." Now it appears that the Dutch language has its own Sleeping Beauty... or should that be Rip Van Winkle? Continue reading...
Is there any drink more seasonal than eggnog, that Yuletide mixture of sweetened milk, beaten eggs, and (at least traditionally) liquor? As we head into the peak time for eggnog consumption, let's put aside our mugs and stop to consider where the word eggnog actually comes from. Continue reading...
The end-of-the-year movie rush is upon us, when the studios roll out their high-prestige projects. I've been thinking about words related to two major movies of the season: Up in the Air (now in theaters), adapted from the novel of the same name by Walter Kirn, and Avatar (coming soon!), the sci-fi extravaganza from James Cameron of Titanic fame. Continue reading...
A couple of weeks ago, Merriam-Webster announced their top words of 2009 based on the intensity of lookups to its online dictionary and thesaurus. Now Dictionary.com has their own announcement of the most looked-up words of the past year. Though the main list is full of usual suspects like affect and effect (perennial stumpers even for native English speakers), the "top gainer" is a very unusual word: esurient, meaning 'extremely hungry; desirous; greedy.' What might explain the ravenous interest in this obscure term? Continue reading...

Blog Excerpts

How We Got to "Hello"

Have you ever wondered why we say "hello" when we answer the telephone? Nate Barksdale of the think tank Cardus takes a long look at the history of the greeting here.

November 12th isn't a public holiday, but perhaps it should be. On this day in 1990, a memorandum was produced by the English physicist Tim Berners-Lee and the Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau while working for CERN in Geneva. Entitled "WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project," it might not have seemed so earth-shattering at the time. But it set into motion the Age of the Web: it's hard to overestimate the impact this document has had on our chronically wired culture — and on our language. Continue reading...
30 31 32 33 34 Displaying 218-224 of 284 Articles

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