The musical misunderstandings called mondegreens
As an English teacher and language columnist, I know as well as anyone that the world is full of errors, errors that sometimes seem more numerous than monkeys at a banana convention.
There are spoonerisms, which are unintended reversals like “The Lord is a shoving leopard.”...
The Dictionary of American Regional English, a comprehensive lexicon of local language quirks, nears completion
If you’re living in a snowpocalyptic wasteland like the ice planet Hoth, Buffalo, New York, or much of the United States lately, you’ve probably shoveled some snow onto the berm.
Berm?
Oh, excuse me,...
How to can employees in a humane and deceitful manner
Unemployment is a national disease, and I just want you to know that I feel your pain, employers of America.
Hey, anyone can sympathize with out-of-work citizens trying to pay the bills and shelter the family. It takes a truly great humanitarian to bleed for the...
Ever since Adam introduced Eve to Barney the dinosaur—talk about awkward!—the nomenclature of relationships has been fraught with difficulty.
Boyfriend and girlfriend are the most acceptable terms for the person you’re dating, yet seem too childish for oldsters or even thirtysomethings. In conversation, we often settle for bulky phrases...
Is text messaging destroying our language?
Texting is pretty awful, isn’t it? Every “sentence” is OMG icu lolcat WTF. Ninety percent of texting is done by teens. Not only are kids turning in term papers full of abbreviations, but they’re ruining the English language for the rest of us. And we might have to use that thing...
"I apologize for any incontinence" and other examples of the Cupertino effect
Several years ago, a coworker sent me an email that included this memorable expression of apology: “I’m sorry for any incontinence.” Needless to say, so was I.
But did my colleague really lose control of his bowels or bladder, and then decide to tell me about it...
Star Trek's many contributions to the English language
This is going to come as a stunner, but there’s a certain movie hitting the screen, a movie for the pointed-ear set that hopes to resuscitate the comatose Star Trek franchise for a new legion of Klingon language learners.
The only Treks I ever treasured were the...
The Great Recession, the global financial meltdown, and the many other names for our national nightmare
Sometimes naming is easy. When Nadya Suleman had her octuplets, there wasn’t much debate on the perfect nickname: Octomom stuck, and that name will likely follow her to her funeral (which should be well-attended, given...
A new twist on the ubiquitous fail meme makes it political.
Unlike many language hounds, I try to value the life of all words. I really, sincerely don’t get bugged by new words, missing apostrophes, crazy spellings, or even words like impacted, which impact so many other citizens in such a negative way.
But I have my limits. Even a word...
A primer on the brutal and captivating Scripps Howard Spelling Bee
To some, spelling may seem like a useless, old-fashioned skill, like churning butter or exorcising demons. But for people with a certain strain of the word-geek virus, the sporting event of the year is coming up: The Scripps Howard Spelling Bee, which dates...
