I took a class in early 20th century American literature while I was a student at the University of Florida. Every essay, book, or article we read struck someone somehow. I got so disgusted by students saying, “What struck me about…” or, “I was struck by…” that I wrote a response paper asking the professor to imagine me striking a student on the head with my Norton Anthology the next time someone said something about being struck. I found a list of world wide web dangerous words today and it reminded me of that class.
Posts tagged “language”
New Words
The Pseudodictionary is full of words (and phrases) that aren’t really words but should be. In the early 80s we used to call these sniglets, a term coined by, I think, Rich Hall of HBO’s Not Necessarily the News. I first found the Psuedodictionary several months ago when there were only a handful of words
Boston Accents
Boston Accents, and Why They’re Sexy “Women are drawn to young and developing children because they appeal to our maternal instincts. Boston accents mimic a child’s speech and thus also appeal to our maternal instincts. Therefore, women find Boston accents to be cute. Consequently, a male who has a Boston accent is sub-consciously associated with
An Axe in My Head
Incredibly Useful Information Department How to say, “Oh my God! There’s an axe in my head,” in over 60 languages. link via weblog wannabe
On Speaking
On speaking goodly
Using Pig Latin to disguise Napster file names
Elements of Style
Writing well is easier with help
Half-Baked Ideas
If someone devises a really incredible caper, why don’t we say that it was fully-baked? I’m constantly hearing of half-baked plans. Half-baked schemes. Half-baked ideas. Does anyone have a thoroughly-baked thought?
The English Language
I really get aggravated when people try to argue their way out of what are really meaningless mistakes by saying that the English language is flexible and there aren’t any hard and fast rules and who cares if they’ve spelled something incorrectly because it doesn’t matter as long as you get it and blah, blah,