NEW FROM THE NEWSLETTER THIS WEEK
Agelastic The Oxford English Dictionary not only marks this as obsolete, but finds only two examples, from seventeenth and eighteenth century dictionaries. Searching the literature shows that the word’s not that rare ...
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Damp Squid “A word,” said Humpty Dumpty to Alice, “means just what I choose it to mean” and went on to assert dogmatically, “The question is which is to be master.” Is the language to rule us or we it? This goes to the heart ...
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Mycodiesel On 2 November, this word was known only to a very few people, all associated with Montana State University. Within two days, it had appeared in hundreds of press reports worldwide. Of such is the speed ...
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If you subscribed to the newsletter (by e-mail or RSS), you would be able to read every new piece a week earlier. Other features include comments from subscribers and notes on words in the news. The last year’s newsletters are available to sample in our backissue archive.
RANDOMLY CHOSEN
The Whole Nine Yards There are some queries that we answerers of questions on the story of the English language get asked more often than others. “What is the third word ending in gry?” has come top of the ...
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RECENTLY ADDED PAGES
A flea in one’s ear; Carborexia; Mansuetude; Hypermiling; Chambers Slang Dictionary; In-laws; Minigarch; Recessionista; The Lure of the Red Herring; Fuliginous; Jackpot; Apricate; Haute barnyard; Jay-walking; Hwyl; Nympholepsy; Kippers and curtains; Satisfactory; Take the biscuit; Enchiridion; Gnathonic; Piggyback; Pracademic; Bless your cotton socks; Geo-engineering; Mooreeffoc; Virosphere; Bespoke; Indexes versus indices.
NEWS
• This site’s e-mail newsletter has been nominated for the biennial L-soft Choice Awards. Please vote for World Wide Words.
• My dictionary of affixes, Ologies and Isms, is now freely available online at http://www.affixes.org.
THE NEXT WEB SITE UPDATE
The next update is due on 22 November 2008, when you may read about the event called a Black swan, the unusual word Chatoyant, and discover the origins of Widow’s peak.
TRY MY BOOKS ...
SIC!
• We’ve been having fun with bad translations from Chinese in recent weeks, but it’s by no means the only language that loses a lot in translation. The BBC news had a story on 31 October about a bilingual road sign in Swansea, South Wales. In English it reads “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.” Underneath, the text in Welsh is “Nid wyf yn y swyddfa ar hyn o bryd. Anfonwch unrhyw waith i’w gyfieithu”, which may be translated as “I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated.” This was the text of the e-mail that came back from the translation service used by staff of Swansea council when a Welsh equivalent of the English sign was requested. The BBC site has a picture of the sign, which has now been taken down.
• Another translation problem, this time from Europe. Bram Amsel e-mailed from Antwerp: “The Dutch word nuchter means both fasting and sober. In a hospital release letter written in English a doctor stated that the patient should be ‘non-sober’ when he comes back for his blood test. Fortunately the gaffe was caught in time.”
• This one will startle you if you know any chemistry. Steve Hirsch found that the ads for a currently available Student Chemistry Kit from Arbor Scientific assert it’s an “Introduction to the elements from Ammonium to Zinc.” To stay with scientific howlers, Tim Weekes thought we might like to know about a report in the Bristol City Council’s October Your City newsletter: “Bristol City Council’s plastic recycling subcontractor — Recresco — uses a completely new way of collecting plastic bottles: a high-pressure vacuum to empty the bottle banks.”
• “Our local bakery,” reports Fred Wallis from Perth in Australia, “has a sign proudly proclaiming, ‘Tuesday is Pensioner’s Day — buy one, get one free’. But what would you do with two half-price pensioners?”
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