Wednesday, April 26, 2006
I’m not going to quote it for fear of ruining its beauty, but check out this awesome satire of the current immigration/documentation/guest worker debate. It’s cracking me up. (Source Link)
Monday, April 24, 2006
Crying Wolof about beer
Here’s a real howler: The word “booze” comes from the Nubian “boosa,” a type of strong beer. No, it doesn’t, no matter how many unreliable sources perpetuate it.
The Middle English Dictionary dates the verb booze to ca1325. The Oxford English Dictionary concurs and marks it as apparently from Middle Dutch. There’s a German verb, bausen, with the same meaning. OED ultimately suggests booze is “directly related to buise a large drinking-vessel.”
Rule: Never attribute to exotics what is best credited to your neighbors.
(Source Link)Filed under Language and Languages • Quibbling • Rules • (2) Comments • Permalink
Darling buds
Friday, April 21, 2006
The Bus Plunge
Owner evicted, thousands of books thrown out at Gaithersburg shop
Filed under Books and Literature • Quotes • (0) Comments • Permalink
This is the personal weblog of Grant Barrett, editor of the Double-Tongued Dictionary, a collection of words from the fringes of English. More about this site...
Recent Entries
- A hearty endorsement of shout quotes: scare quotes used for emphasis
- How to buy a dictionary
- Jinx and padiddle: games we play
- Saying it wrong on purpose
- Nicknames from the Underground: Busharraf, Chillary, and Killadelphia
- New slang unpacked
- UPDATED: Crosswords in Black and White
- Find me in American Way Magazine
- Recent catchwords: read-alike, violin hickey, throw a Porsche at someone, Q-tip cruise, 1-800 car
- The Tell-All of the Century: Snitching Slang
- Fog line, instant ancestor, trashout
- See, ya kid: saying goodbye in slang
- Interview with British slang lexicographer Jonathon Green
- New Scientist: “Word nerds capture fleeting online English”
- The blueprints of a Craigslist apartment scam
Recent Catchwords
- park v. (5/16)
- whale eye n. (5/16)
- water buffalo n. (5/16)
- Churchill n. (5/15)
- moondust n. (5/15)
- mouse type n. (5/14)
- hung up adj. (5/14)
- sideways market n. (5/14)
- Bristol dust n. (5/14)
- booth turnaround n. (5/14)
- YAWN n. (5/13)
- doodlesocking n. (5/13)
- job and knock n. (5/13)
- radwaste n. (5/12)
- meat without feet n. (5/12)
- night-out money n. (5/12)
- podbusting n. (5/12)
- short-and-distort n. (5/12)
- yoging n. (5/12)
- nightstand Buddhist n. (5/9)
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