language

Usage tip o’ the day

January 02, 2009 15:11

Courtesy of Bryan Garner: ma’am.This contraction of “madam” can be found pretty much throughout the English-speaking world. But it especially characterizes Southern, Midwestern, and Western American English on the one hand, and British aristocratic speech (but only in reference to...

2009 List of Banished Words

December 31, 2008 19:39

Lake Superior State University in Michigan has just published its 2009 List of Banished Words, aka the “34th annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness”. The list started in 1976 and is based on submissions by the...

The List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness.

Ann Althouse
December 31, 2008 14:50

The proclamation has come down. You can no longer use "maverick," "from Wall Street to Main Street," "desperate search," "monkey" (the suffix), "game-changing," "carbon footprint," "winner of five nominations," "green," "going green," "first dude," "staycation." Probably a lot more. I'm culling...

Czar Thought

December 22, 2008 03:15

When did it become so fashionable for the United States to have czars for everything? Apparently, the first “drug czar” was appointed at the height of the cold war. Do we have nostalgia for the good old days in pre-communist Russia? Technorati Tags: Working Families Czar, Joe Biden, ...

A stuffy scientific journal accidentally prints an ad for a strip club on the cover of its journal.

Ann Althouse
December 16, 2008 13:55

Like those idiots with their tattoos, the Max Planck Institute was seduced by the allure of Chinese characters:Editors had hoped to find an elegant Chinese poem to grace the cover of a special issue, focusing on China, of the MaxPlanckForschung journal, but instead of poetry they ran a text...