“Why does it start with A B C and not F D Q?”
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Monday, September 17, 2007
Elizabeth Hand reviews David Plante’s book ABC for the Washington Post. She describes it as an eccentric contemporary folk tale about a grief-bound pack of new acquaintances compulsively in search of the origins of the alphabet. “What is an alphabet, really, but a means of expressing what is inexpressible: the sum of all human history and experience and longing? ‘They were aware of this, aware of every single object as an icon of some greater meaning than each object had in itself.’”
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...
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- Lexicographer Laurence Urdang Dies at 81
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- Can bad language punditry be stopped? Can false attributions for classic quotes be fixed?
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- Disfluencies: What do they mean by “I mean”?
- A hearty endorsement of shout quotes: scare quotes used for emphasis
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- Nicknames from the Underground: Busharraf, Chillary, and Killadelphia
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Recent Catchwords
- hole doping n. (8/29)
- foot drop n. (8/29)
- springboard injunction n. (8/28)
- turabosis n. (8/28)
- Truman Show delusion n. (8/28)
- relokill n. (8/27)
- toothpick rule n. (8/27)
- age-doping n. (8/27)
- narcisurfing n. (8/27)
- chemical rapping n. (8/27)
- LPU n. (8/27)
- peanut buttering n. (8/26)
- whipsawing n. (8/26)
- momtourage n. (8/26)
- thin file n. (8/26)
- two minute man n. (8/26)
- family forest n. (8/26)
- squircle v. (8/25)
- pocket litter n. (8/24)
- cuckoo smurfing n. (8/23)
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