Month: August 2008
Wilf? Yuffer? Get real!
My latest column in the Malaysia Star. … A lot of well-publicised new words are fake. Take the word wilf as an example. It stands for “what was I looking for?” and describes the tendency of people on the Internet to get distracted. Web users intend to find information about, say, horses but instead end…
Lexicographer Laurence Urdang Dies at 81
One of my colleagues has died: Larry Urdang, 81. Paul Luna has written a bit more about him. As you can read, he had a fruitful and respectable career. He also had a generosity of spirit that led him to provide such things at the Laurence Urdang-Dictionary Society of North American Award, which I was…
Unexpected Picture Bonus!
Well, the camera was full again, so here are a few more pictures. The boy in the park at Dumbo, which is right between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges at the westernmost edge of Brooklyn. That’s the Brooklyn Bridge in the background. Smooches! Monkeys have wet kisses. Monkeys also like to kiss babies. The baby…
A thesaurus can be harmful
My latest column in the Malaysia Star. … Please don’t use a thesaurus. It does terrible things to your writing. Yes, that’s right. Do yourself a favour and forget about thesauruses. They’re harmful unless used correctly. Usually, thesaurus-users are looking for a different word for an idea they have in mind. The word they already…
Sixteen Months
All modesty aside, look how cute our boy is. (Photos below.) He is very cute. Cute, cute, cute, cute, cute, cute. 🙂 Progress continues apace. He is a talking machine. He probably knows more than 100 words. He learns words after you say them two or three times, and then he remembers them for good,…