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Ben Yagoda tracks the movement of British expressions to America, focusing in particular on “gone/went missing”. He traces the arrival of the phrase to a story about Chandra Levy written by Helen Kennedy (who gladly accepts the credit). I for one am grateful to Kennedy. Growing up in West Virginia, someone such as the unfortunate [...]
Archive for the ‘Language and usage’ Category
September 12th, 2011
Requiem for the past subjunctive.
August 26th, 2011
Category: Language and usage
Listening just now to a radio report of the counter-clockwise spinning Irene hurricane called to mind a night some years ago when I was lost in the Surrey darkness, trying to find the house of an English friend. My friend called me and said that I had made a mistake by turning left at the [...]
July 28th, 2011
Category: Language and usage
The NY Times Book Review tagline for Steven Tyler’s bestselling book states that it covers the “meteoric rise, fall and rise” of Aerosmith.
June 23rd, 2011
Category: Language and usage
Some words are so commonly misunderstood that they are probably worthless for communication, for example “biweekly”. A recent experience makes me wonder if “disinterested” has met the same sad fate. A young colleague came to me with a difficult decision about what type of scientific projects to pursue, and I said in the course of [...]
May 9th, 2011
Category: Language and usage
The hallmark of being an Israelite was being able to pronounce the “sh” sound. For American and British English, it seems to me, it’s being able to pronounce “the” or the short “i.” What is it in other languages?
May 9th, 2011
A British friend has given me some old episodes of a high-energy cop show “The Sweeney”, which was popular in the UK in the mid 1970s (Americans would recognize star John Thaw as the future Inspector Morse). The title of the series seems odd at first, until one realizes that it is Cockney Rhyming Slang. [...]
May 4th, 2011
Category: Language and usage
When did ordinary courtesy - which includes not calling people by names offensive to them - become a bad thing?
March 7th, 2011
Category: Language and usage
I have written here before about words that should not be used in some contexts where they are technically correct yet exceedingly likely to be misunderstood. The other day I came to the conclusion that there are some words that can’t be used at all because of the confusion they generate. Two learned reviewers of [...]
