Wordorigins.org

I normally don’t go for cutesy things, but the lolcats phenomenon is pretty funny.

If you’re not familiar with lolcats, here is the Wikipedia article. There is even some marginal linguistic interest, as demonstrated on Language Log here, here, and here.

But I really got a chuckle when Geoffrey Chaucer Hath A Blog took on the phenomenon with LolPilgrims.

The food column in today’s Jackson, Mississippi Clarion-Ledger features a short interview with me on some food words (and a recipe for the chili).

For those of you in the UK, the second season of Balderdash and Piffle starts this evening at 10 pm on BBC2. The show is a cooperative venture between the BBC and the Oxford English Dictionary and explores the histories of interesting words. It also invites the public to help contribute in filling in the gaps in words’ histories. The first episode, One Sandwich Short of a Picnic, explores words for madness. The eight-part series airs Fridays at 10 pm and repeats on Mondays at 11:20 pm, also on BBC2.

The appeal list for words to be used on the show is here.

Every Friday, pilot Patrick Smith writes a column for Salon.com on commercial aviation. It’s a fascinating, insider’s look into the world of airlines. This week (and continuing next week) he is presenting a glossary of airline terms. If you’ve ever wondered the heck “cross check” was, click and find out.

Well, I’ve just finished the revision of The Big List with the posting of the updated entry for Murphy’s Law a few minutes ago.

The revision took just over a year. (I started back on 8 April 2006.) Prior to the revision, some of the entries were nearly nine years old and badly in need of updating to reflect new research and improved research skills on my part. (Some of those early entries were embarrassingly bad.)

Moving forward, I’ll revise entries as they warrant it and I’ll be adding some of the old A Way With Words articles that are not currently on the site. These older articles will appear as “archived” versions under their original dates.

And I’ll be adding new items to the list at a greater rate than I have over the past year.