word of the day

Hud and Lash nail it: Read more

There’s been a lot of smack talk about politicians’ seemingly excessive use of the word "I" lately.  Language Log has an interesting guest post from Professor Jamie Pennebraker who interprets and compares the use of the First Person Singular among George Bush, John Kerry, and Barack Obama, with interesting results.  Be sure to check out… Read more

…that some of our students are Wikipedia Kids. Read more

Tired of decoding incomprehensible techspeak and bureaucratese?  Geoff Pullum at Language Log gives a great example of this nerdview.  I just encountered it again, realizing there’s no obvious indication of how to turn of an iPod (hold down the Pause/Play part of the ring–at the bottom–for two seconds). This is going to become a lecture… Read more

So now the credit card companies consider me a deadbeat.  And since the slice they take from the merchants every time I make a credit card purchase isn’t enough for them to cover their expenses, they’re going to cut out rewards and cashbacks, and start charging annual fees.  You wanna see deadbeat?  The first time… Read more

Over at Language Log, Mark Liberman has a fascinating discussion of all things bogus, and incidentally creates a new continuum of veracity: …bogosity is epistemologically even further from lying than bullshit is, since  bullshitters don’t  care whether or not their statements are true, whereas someone who promotes bogus ideas may be passionately convinced of their… Read more

A member of the rainbow underclass gets a Good Enough Diploma. Tip from Joanne Jacobs. Read more

When I first read this article about Barack-0 flying in a pizza chef, I was a bit miffed when the chef said ‘It’s surreal, it’s a huge honour,’so I looked the word up:sur·real (sə rē′əl) adjective of, related to, or characteristic of surrealism bizarre; fantastic; grotesque Yup, right word…surrealy. Tip from Mark Steyn at The… Read more

This is even better than an Enemy of the People: hostis humani generis.  (It’s in the comments). Read more

As in, "…the California scruel system…" Tip–a two-cushion shot–from the Instapundit. Update (5 April).  Two (more) with one blow!  We now have the delightful phrases passive drinking and health facist, appearing in the same article. Based on the unsolicited editorial comment at the end of the article, I’d say Andy Coughlan is a health facist… Read more