Browsing Year 2009
Buzzwords of 2009 in the New York Times
My annual buzzwords of the year piece for the New York Times has appeared today, featuring expressions such as aporkalypse, swine flu party, El Stiffo, Octomom, and sexting. Also, there’s a discussion going on about them on the New York Times Ideas blog, where you can leave your own comments about my choices, or give more…
A note found inside Birds of the Pacific Coast
Recently I bought a copy of Birds of the Pacific Coast by William Ayres Eliot at B Street Books in San Mateo. It is a charming book, filled with color plates (which you can see here) and interesting tidbits, but I bought it because it contained this handwritten letter inserted in its pages: . It more…
Now accepting nominations for the 2009 “word of the year” and the 2000-9 “word of the decade”
The American Dialect Society is now accepting nominations for the “word of the year” of 2009, as well as for the “word of the decade” for 2000-2009 What is the word or phrase which best characterizes the year or the decade? What expression most reflects the ideas, events, and themes which have occupied the English-speaking more…
How much underworld slang is still used from 80 years ago?
My latest column in the Malaysia Star: Underworld lingo. The column, as always, is written for an audience that may not be perfectly fluent with English. … In 1931, the Los Angeles Times published a story headlined Underworld lingo. It was a lexicon of criminal cant and jargon written by Ben Kendall, a police reporter. more…
Remembering William Safire
I want to take a moment to remember William Safire for his kindness. He was unstinting with his help in matters that were important to me. He gave generous public praise to my radio show, A Way with Words. He supported the Historical Dictionary of American Slang when it applied for funding during my editorship, more…
The elephant in the language
Today I want to talk about elephants. One of the joys of my work as a dictionary editor is finding arbitrary but interesting connections among words, such as those colloquial expressions in English that have to do with elephants. One elephant you might encounter in English is a white elephant. This is something like a more…
Updates will continue to be slow for Double-Tongued
My family and I are in the process of moving ourselves and our belongings from New York City to the San Francisco Bay area—completely across North America—so updates will continue to be sporadic on this web site. Stay subscribed, though, because they will resume their previous vigor in just a couple of weeks.
Call of nature
My latest column in the Malaysia Star. It is written for English learners. … Bodily functions are a rich source of English slang, so naturally, we have a lot of ways of saying “urinate,” “defecate” and “go somewhere to urinate and/or defecate.” Here’s a quick rundown of appropriate usage. Freshen up. This can mean anything more…
Feedburner URLs that have huge accidental traffic
When I tried last month to consolidate my feeds into one, things did not go as planned. I lost about 3000 subscribers, for one thing, mainly due to RSS readers that don’t know how to handle the very standard and ordinary htaccess redirect. I did this through Feedburner, which hosts my feeds. Feedburner also put more…
I held Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary in my hands
Last night I got to see some rare first editions in a private library, including a copy of Samuel Johnson’s first 1755 dictionary. I held it in my two hands and flipped through the pages. Very exciting! We also saw a copy of the wire service roll recording the teletypes sent out on the day more…
