Linguist, lexicographer, writer, editor, broadcaster

Category: Uncategorized


  • Love Ewe

    My friend Al has launched a site for inflatable sheep. I sense a great disturbance in the Force.

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  • Bags in trees

    My new favorite blog: Bags in Trees. I found it because it links to my entry for witches’ knickers.

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  • NWTF

    So everybody knows about the woman who was told she couldn’t have a license plate with the letters “NWTF” on it. I read in many places that this is because that stands for “Now What the Fuck.” I dispute that NWTF is any kind of established initialism or acronym meaning “Now What the Fuck.” In…

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  • Snakes on a Sudoku, the best movie tie-in ever

    Congratulations to Francis on his new book, Snakes on a Sudoku. Awesome. The movie has passed from joke, to in-joke, to out-joke, to hypefest, to ho-hum hypefest, and back to joke, in-joke, etc., ad infinitum, and so on.

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  • New York Dolls

    “After seeing him on TV, Kane, who has appeared in several films himself as a non-speaking extra, drinks a quart of peppermint schnapps, beats his wife with cat furniture, and jumps out a third story window, shattering his kneecaps and elbow.”

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  • Elise’s recipes

    In an Internet full of cruddy cooking web sites overloaded with ugly advertising and ripped-off recipes, it’s refreshing to go to Elise and find a clean layout, friendly text, full credit given for recipes when they are borrowed, great pictures, and a good bunch of friendly commenters. Time and time again when googling for recipes…

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  • Fightin’ Words

    I meant to post this earlier. Chris Vaughn interviewed me while I was in Oxford, England, and wrote a nice article for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram about military slang and jargon.

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  • Never go to a woo-woo type for word origins

    This is the stupidest folk etymology I’ve seen in a while: The word “rune,” as far as I know, comes from the word “runner” where a runner would run with a rune stone four miles down the road, and then he’d give it to another runner, who’d run another four miles to another runner, who’d…

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  • Interview at Number One Hit Song

    Dana, one of those people I know through the Internet (I know: it’s weird that 15 or so years into the Internet Age—I date the Internet Age from when it became a popular tool, not from when it was invented—people still think you’re weird if you have friends or lovers you met on the Internet.…

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  • Inuit Sign Language

    Inuit Sign Language seems, plausibly, to be the newest language in North America. There’s a long article from 2005 in This Magazine about its relevance in a much-discussed legal case.

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