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Books and Mortar
A memorable (to me) segment on the old Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour was “Share a Little Tea with Goldie,” in which a wide-eyed hippie, played by Leigh French, found various things to say “Oh, wow”...
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Sing We
I grew up singing carols, and I am still singing them, these days in an interfaith chorus that gives an annual holiday concert with audience participation. Returning to the songs of one’s youth is...
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Our National Anthimeria
Thanks, Nancy Friedman. Some time ago, I read a blog post by the naming consultant about the trend of anthimeria in advertising — that is, using a word as a different part of speech than normal, as in...
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Them, Themself, and They
The Lingua Franca bloggers Allen Metcalf and Anne Curzan have written about the American Dialect Society’s laudable selection of singular they as Word of the Year. But they, like most commenting on the...
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Oh, Commas
As the self-appointed watcher of commas, known to some (OK, known to myself) as The Comma Maven, I naturally was concerned when I saw the provisional title of my friend Craig Pittman’s forthcoming book...
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Write if You Get Work
Bob, as Wally Ballou, interviewing Ray, as cranberry grower Ward Smith “If they like Bob and Ray, they’re OK.” —David Letterman, on how to tell if someone has a good sense of humor. Comedy, in addition...
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Leaps in the Dark: the Discourse of Brexit
Just when you need maximally careful use of the uniquely human gift of language, everything goes to hell and people start throwing clichés around like ninja stars. Britain’s prime minister, David...
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Who You Calling Phobic?
In Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony, the presenter J.K. Simmons described The Danish Girl as a film about someone who had undergone “gender-confirmation surgery.” I immediately recognized the phrase —...
View Article‘Gangsta’ Shakespeare
“It will be like catching butterflies in the dark,” a colleague of mine commented. He was talking about my signing up to teach a course called “Shakespeare in Prison” at the Hampshire County Jail, in...
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Don’t Speak!
In the funniest scene in Woody Allen’s last funny movie, Bullets Over Broadway (1994), the aspiring playwright David Shayne (John Cusack) tries to communicate his feelings to the stage diva Helen...
View Article‘Punter’s Chance’ or ‘Puncher’s Chance’? I’ll Punt
If [the Oklahoma City Thunder are] clicking on all cylinders, I give them a punter’s chance obviously to put the kind of firepower out on the floor to go head to head with the [Golden State] Warriors...
View ArticleThe Social Consequences of Switching to English
I commented here a few months ago on the status of English as a planetwide communication medium and some aspects of the “undeserved good luck” that got it that unlikely status. “The race for global...
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The Versatile Octothorpe
Not being a tweeter, I rarely think about the octothorpe, now known more commonly as a hashtag. I do mark students’ papers by hand, though, and one thing I tend to insert — when no one is spelled as...
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Sad!
It is no news that the person I call the presumptuous Republican nominee for president likes to use exclamation points in his tweets. Take a look at a tranche of his Twitter feed: One might think this...
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Just Like a Woman
On occasional Thursday evenings I participate in a figure-drawing circle. Artists of all abilities sit with their easels in front of them and a nude model in the center, who poses first in short...
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A Postcard From Schleswig-Holstein
Kiel, Germany — The Kieler Woche is a huge weeklong festival of art, music, culture, theater, and maritime recreational events, held on the western shore of a fjord, in the state of Schleswig-Holstein,...
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Verb-Forming for Fun and Profit
I recently heard that a gay acquaintance of mine has gotten divorced. I mention his sexual orientation certainly not because there’s anything wrong with it but because it’s relevant to the matter of...
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The Safe Space
It has become a recurrent motif in academic parlance in the United States to talk about security, not as a discipline but in existential terms. This isn’t surprising given the superabundance of...
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Brit Thesps Nail Yank Lingo
Hugh Laurie can talk the talk. The American characters in Genius — screening earlier this summer in art-house cinemas everywhere — are played by the following actors. Thomas Wolfe: Jude Law (English)...
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M22: Highway Sign and Trademark
Fickr photo courtesy of Kathleen McDonald M22 is not just another pretty face. In fact, not only is it not a face, it isn’t particularly pretty, unless you think a plain black-and-white road sign with...
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