http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php en dave@wordorigins.org Copyright 2010 2010-09-05T11:28:00-08:00 http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/welcome_to_wordoriginsorg/ http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/welcome_to_wordoriginsorg/#When:15:10:00Z Wordorigins.org is devoted to the origins of words and phrases, or as a linguist would put it, to etymology. Etymology is the study of word origins. (It is not the study of insects; that is entomology.) Where words come from is a fascinating subject, full of folklore and historical lessons. Often, popular tales of a word’s origin arise. Sometimes these are true; more often they are not. While it can be disappointing when a neat little tale turns out to be untrue, almost invariably the true origin is just as interesting. About Wordorigins.org 2010-09-01T15:10:00-08:00 http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/astronomy_astrophotography/ http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/astronomy_astrophotography/#When:14:26:00Z This has nothing to do with word origins or language, but I am also an amateur astronomer and just getting started with serious astrophotography. Several friends have asked that I post some of my astrophotographs to the web, so I’ve added a section to the website to do just that. I’ll also probably add occasional blog posts on what works and doesn’t work about my photography of the night skies. Bear in mind that I’m still pretty new at this and am refining my techniques, so most of these images are flawed in one way or another. But I’m learning. Astronomy 2008-07-20T14:26:00-08:00 http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/reference_books_in_jail_prison_hoosegow_clink_big_house/ http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/reference_books_in_jail_prison_hoosegow_clink_big_house/#When:11:28:00Z A Canadian federal judge in Vancouver has ruled that a prisoner is entitled to his own copy of a thesaurus, according to the Montreal Gazette. The judge ruled that a thesaurus is an “educational text” and not a “personal” book and that prison authorities should fork over the $23.14 to buy the Oxford University Press paperback for the prisoner. Prisoners in Canada have a personal expenditure budget, but this prisoner was over his limit and therefore submitted the invoice to the prison as an educational cost, which doesn’t fall under the “personal” category. Prison authorities denied the purchase, saying that thesauruses were available in the prison library. The judge also cited the Humpty Dumpty scene from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass in his decision. (Hat Tip: Martin Laplante, DSNA mailing list) The Harmless Drudge 2010-09-05T11:28:00-08:00 http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/future_of_the_print_oed/ http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/future_of_the_print_oed/#When:13:21:00Z The demise of the print version of the Oxford English Dictionary has been greatly exaggerated, or at least the obituary is premature. Several news articles in recent days have run with the statement that the third edition of the OED will not be printed, remaining an online resource only. According to these sources, the size of the dictionary (the second edition consisted of twenty volumes) and the decline of the print dictionary market in favor of the online market necessitated this decision. But actually no such decision has been made and will probably not be made for another decade. Here is the official statement from Oxford University Press, via Jesse Sheidlower’s personal blog. If I had to speculate, I would predict that there will be a print edition, but aimed at presentation copies and for those who have money to burn and like the ego boost that impressive-looking books filling their shelves gives them. The print runs will be small, and perhaps printed on demand. Other than possibly “college” or “pocket” dictionaries for quick reference, I just don’t see a market for print dictionaries. I don’t believe that “print is dead” (print is and will remain a very useful technological form), but certain classes of printed material certainly are dying, and dictionaries and similar reference books are among them. The Harmless Drudge 2010-08-31T13:21:00-08:00 http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/a_whorfian_summary/ http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/a_whorfian_summary/#When:12:28:00Z It is a few days old, but I just came across this New York Times article by Guy Deutscher. It is an excellent summation of how linguistic relativity (the Sapir-Whorf theory, which should really be called just the Whorf theory as Sapir really had nothing to do with it) is and is not valid. I particularly like the quote from Roman Jakobson that, “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” (Hat tip to Arts and Letters Daily) The Harmless Drudge 2010-08-31T12:28:00-08:00 http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/video_friday_stephen_fry_on_swearing/ http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/video_friday_stephen_fry_on_swearing/#When:09:56:00Z Not much to say, other than seeing a young Hugh Laurie doing comedy is also fun. (Why is it that comedians so often turn out to be fine dramatic actors, but the reverse is usually not the case.) Enjoy. (Hat tip to Pharyngula) The Harmless Drudge 2010-08-27T09:56:00-08:00 http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/crowdsourcing_peer_review/ http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/crowdsourcing_peer_review/#When:12:24:00Z Peer review of academic articles is a flawed process, but it serves as a necessary function. Experiments like this one outlined in a New York Times article are healthy explorations into how the process can be improved by the new media. The Harmless Drudge 2010-08-24T12:24:00-08:00 http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/more_on_google_books/ http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/more_on_google_books/#When:12:07:00Z [Actually, this is a year-old article—which explains why “there is little new” in it. I mentioned it a year ago. --DW, 8/27] It’s been a while since I’ve posted or linked to a post about the problems with Google Books. But here’s an article on the topic by Geoffrey Nunberg. For those that are familiar with the topic, there is little new in this article, but the parade of errors in the metadata is humorous, if nothing else. And this conclusion of Nunberg’s is spot on: In short, Google has taken a group of the world’s great research collections and returned them in the form of a suburban-mall bookstore. While I share many of Nunberg’s complaints, I don’t share the sentiment in the title that Google Books is a “disaster.” On balance, Google Books is an invaluable resource. Yes, Google has gotten a lot of things wrong, and those errors severely limit the utility of the digital library, but the benefits of ready access to the truly vast number of books outweighs the problems with the system. (Hat tip: Arts & Letters Daily) The Harmless Drudge 2010-08-24T12:07:00-08:00 http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/a_couple_of_links_about_copyright/ http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/a_couple_of_links_about_copyright/#When:12:06:00Z The Arts and Letters Daily blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education is really a must-have for your RSS feed. Today, it features two articles of note about copyright. The first is an article in Der Spiegel Online about a hypothesis by historian Eckhard Höffner that contends Germany’s economic and industrial expansion in the nineteenth century was largely the result of the country not having a copyright law. While I’m skeptical of this rather strong contention, I have no doubt that the free exchange of ideas does lead to economic and technological progress and that can be strangled when ideas are given too limited a circulation. In this case I think the problem in England, to which Höffner compares Germany, was not so much the copyright law, but the business models of the publishers that limited the free flow of ideas. The second is a very creative, graphical review by cartoonist Ward Sutton of Lewis Hyde’s new book, Common as Air. Hyde’s book takes on what is perceived by many to be abuses of copyright law in contemporary American society. Evidently, Sutton regularly produces graphical reviews for Barnesandnoble.com.  The Harmless Drudge 2010-08-21T12:06:00-08:00 http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/jack_london_biography/ http://www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/jack_london_biography/#When:12:18:00Z Johann Hari has a review of a new biography of Jack London in Slate. London may be my favorite writer. His prose style is terse, yet evocative (and can’t be easily parodied like that of his imitator Hemingway), and unlike many of his nineteenth-century predecessors remains accessible and readable today. Yet he was an enormously complex, and in some respects despicable, human being. One of the reasons I may like London so much is that, unlike most kids, I was not assigned his works in middle or high school. (I read the short story “To Build a Fire” in school,” that’s all.) I discovered his work as an adult. I object to the characterization of his most famous work, The Call of the Wild, as “a dog story.” Yes, many consider it that, probably because they last read it in eighth grade, at an age where they could not truly appreciate its themes. But calling it “a dog story” is like calling Huckleberry Finn “a boy’s adventure novel.” It is a complex tale that highlights how thin the veneer of civilization is in us all. And the prose is just glorious to read. I’m all for exposing children to great literature at a young age, but in so doing we should be careful not to pigeonhole those works as children’s literature. The Harmless Drudge 2010-08-15T12:18:00-08:00