Friday, January 03, 2003
“This past year we have learnt that combating terrorism is the same messy, hit-and-miss business it has always been. Each weekend Downing Street and its ëterrorism unit’ summons the press for the Sunday scare story. We have now had the Nine-Eleven anniversary scare, the sarin-on-the-Tube scare, the smallpox scare, the ëthreat to public transport’ scare, the Christmas shopping scare and last Sunday’s ëLondon quarantine’ scare. (Note, these stories always appear on a Sunday.) They offer no useable public advice. They are pure heebie-jeebie. Despite the terrorising of American and British citizens by their Governments in this way, there is no apparent evidence that they are any more at risk than they have always been.” (Source Link)
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
- Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours
- What a bitchin’ word!
- Don’t forget about the dialect: dauncy/donsie, faunch, and jockey box
- Wilf? Yuffer? Get real!
- Lexicographer Laurence Urdang Dies at 81
- A thesaurus can be harmful
- Can bad language punditry be stopped? Can false attributions for classic quotes be fixed?
- There’s one in every country
- Scottish Language Dictionaries fundraiser
- SouthWest Writers
- Disfluencies: What do they mean by “I mean”?
- 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
Recent Catchwords
- nuclear winter n. (10/7)
- recessionista n. (10/7)
- paint the tape v. phr. (10/7)
- Minnewisowa n. (10/7)
- fluffy n. (10/7)
- charticle n. (10/6)
- window-dress v. (10/5)
- doughnut effect n. (10/5)
- Southwest effect n. (10/5)
- glass closet n. (10/5)
- relamp v. (10/5)
- ghost voting n. (10/5)
- jallad n. (10/5)
- hanging yellow n. (10/5)
- Chekhov’s gun n. (10/5)
- primary v. (10/3)
- mack n. (10/3)
- bridge-up n. (10/3)
- paramount lighting n. (10/3)
- HAC n. (10/2)
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