Preposition Project

29 August 2007

A pretty amazing site for those interested in prepositions, but its not for the faint of heart (WARNING: Heavy Linguistic Content). The site characterizes 673 senses of 334 English prepositions. If you’ve ever been tempted to create your own dictionary, a look at this site and the workload required to do lexicography right will almost certainly dissuade you.

Erin’s Denying Requests

25 August 2007

24 Aug: More on how words are selected for inclusion in “the” dictionary by Erin McKean of The Dictionary Evangelist.

Sex Change v. Gender Reassignment

25 August 2007

24 Aug: Joey DiGuglielmo, editor of the Washington Blade, has an interesting article on use of these terms and, more generally, on how newspapers use style guides. Some interesting insights into how PC language is used in the journalistic trenches.

Language Burier

18 July 2007

On Monday, Comedy Central’s The Daily Show did a story on making English the official language of the US. Too funny.

Quotative Like

17 July 2007

Sunday’s International Herald Tribune has a piece on the quotative like, the use of the word like to introduce a quote, as in:

She was, like, “I wouldn’t be caught dead in that outfit.”

Like it or not, it appears as if this use of like is here to stay.