There's been many's the blog post about txt spk and the tragedy it is that schools don't examine grammar anymore - and tragedy it is.

However, the biggest language irk around lately is completely irrelevant placenames. You should not be allowed to call estates and roads and what have you after whatever the hell pops into your head that sounds pretty if it is not geographically or otherwise correct. Do not call it an Avenue if there are no trees. (Incidentally, the description 'tree-lined avenue and similar makes me sad, don't do it. It wouldn't be an avenue if there weren't trees. Tis only yourself you're hurting). Do not call it a crescent if there is no nice arc. Do not call it the laurels if there isn't a plant in sight. It should surely be a crime to be allowed to name your newest housing development after whatever natural wonder you mowed away to create it. Birch Grove indeed....you just axed the birches out of it and it never was a grove.

As for naming council estates after Irish people of note, saints and the people who built them....what the hell?! Dick Spring Meadows or Sonia O'Sullivan Close no thank you.

Dublin Dublin Dublin....is there any other county so full of esate names suggestive of foilage and wonder yet more bereft of natural beauty than Quasimodo?

In celebration or our ability to communicate effectively, I’ve put together this deep links post to spotlight the wonderful world of words.

Morphology or the study of words can be fun as well. Here are some interesting and curious observations about some of the more special words in the English language. I’ve nicknamed them: wacky, crazy, random,  weird,and  unique.

There are also wonderful words with silent letters. There's the world's longest word, and the word consider most difficult to translate.

Different levels of education are often associated with the extent of a person’s vocabulary. However, reading and other exercises can increases the size of your vocabulary as well. It seems logical that the more words a person knows the easier it would be to communicate with other. But that’s not always the case. Here are three fun exercises on interesting words that can give you more word power (if the folks your talking to happen to know them as well): Exercise one, two and three.

After you’ve become satisfied with the depth and breadth of you English vocabulary, it might be rewarding to consider the importance of learning a new language. Besides the satisfaction of speaking to foreigners in their native tongue, a side benefit of tackling a second or third language is that mastery of one’s native language is often improved. Check out these easy (and tricky) Spanish words that you may come across in your travels.

For those interested in digging a little deeper. Exploring the origins of words can give us an insight into how the English language evolves over time to accommodate the needs of its users. Here’s a fun column on the etymology of English words as well as another post on the power of popular usage.

The potential for miscommunication is multiplied by some particularly pesky words which seem to be uniquely effective in confusing even the most careful communicator. Have a look at this post of commonly confused words and then have a go at the quiz at the end to see how your fare.

Finally, even the best of us run into a little writer’s block every now and then when you feel like you’ve just run out of words to say. Fortunately it’s usually not so much that you don’t have anything important to say, it’s more likely that you just haven’t tapped into your reservoir of ideas. If you fit this description from time to time, a look at overcoming writer’s block might be helpful.

Words are wonderful when used wisely. Here are three wise and wonderful resources that I recommend for further consideration.

World wide words, Wordsmith.org, Word spy

Within a month, the word had committed arson no fewer than three times and her reputation for wantonness was met only by the difficulty of spelling her or of finding her in any dictionary in any language or any clue whatsoever as to her origin. And then, one day.

She had long-since fled country, continent, and hemisphere. And then, one day, in a bookstore for wildlife and veterinary medicine she found her meaning, her spelling, and her origin.

Now I don't know about the goatskin leather part, but I like that Morocco is described as a beautiful kingdom!

I began to do a little research of my own as I entered various names of people I know into the database.  Eliza was one of them.  Her name in Arabic means "light."  In Greek it means  "pity."  

The students had to select five friends and/or family names to research.  Part of the assignement was to determine if the name fitted the  person by including a paragraph containing examples supporting their claims.

Eliza 

Eliza's name is fairly appropriate.  I find that she does have some "light" in her.  I see her "light" when she faithfully writes her children every week.  She is "light" when she smiles.  Being of help to others is another way that she displays the meaning of her name.  She helped raise her brother's daughter when her assistance was needed.  Eliza's "light" shines when she walks with God and tries to find her way through life. 

The other meaning fits as well.  She is a pitiful being--one evoking sympathy.  Even though I am often overwhelmingly angry at her; it is tempered with much compassion.  She has experienced a hard, tragic life.  Eliza's innocence was stolen and she was forced to grow up too soon. I too pity her because she has yet to realize that she has the power to overcome her past. 

Does your name fit you?

Now, this post is about a mild shock I received when Firefox didn't recognize the word 'preponed' in my email to friends. I looked up Merriam-Webster online, and prepone wasn't found there. In India, we used it as a perfectly legitimate antonym to postpone.  Well, it is not a nonsense word.  Etymological roots of postpone are post + ponere (i.e., place after), so prepone makes perfect sense (i.e. place before).

It was very amusing to realize that the word that I have been using since something like 5 years doesn't even exist in dictionary.  It is definitely a useful word and may be we will see it in the dictionary soon.

Edit: I could find it on dictionary.com. The entry comes from preview edition of Webster's New Millenium dictionary.

Radical – arising from or going to a root or source; basic: proposed a radical solution to the problem.

Radish – a crisp, pungent, edible root of the plant, Raphanus sativus, of the mustard family, usually eaten raw.

The etymology of radish: Middle English (ME) radiche, from Old English (OE) rædic, from Latin (L) rādīx, rādīc-, root; of radical: ME of a root, from Late Latin rādīcālis, having roots, from L rādīx, rādīc-, root;

So, from one Latin root (pun intended), we have a metaphor and an edible root.

Broke Frenchmen say, "je n'ai pas un radis," which raises a chuckle when glossed into Australian English as: "I haven't a root."

However, we do call someone who rides the rails 'rootless'.

Such a person might eat wild radish, for which the French have the pretty word ravenelle. They use the same word for wallflower, also of the mustard family.

Finally, the entry for ravenelle in my Robert & Collins F<->E dictionary also gives me giroflée for both wallflower and gillyflower. Gillyflower traces back to ME gilofre, geraflour, clearly from French gilofre, girofle – which brings us back to modern F giroflée (wallflower/gillyflower), a synonym for ravenelle, which, in E, is a wild radish – a mustard plant with radical roots.

Lots of English words use 'in' as a qualifier. Inadequate, inconsequential,indigestion, etc.

What all those words have in common is that the qualified word stands on its own and is made negative by the addition of 'in-".

But what about 'tense'. In-tense does have a qualifier, but here 'in-' makes 'tense' stronger.

English. An annoying and confusing language.

In this current world propaganda is more likely to be found than cold, hard truth, and everything in between is where most "truth" lies.

Once upon a time there were housewives. Now they're domestic engineers but the term is dissolving back into housewife or the more popular stay-at-home mom (or dad). There used to be stewardesses, but now they're airline attendants, which is more appropriate because there are men and women, though stewards for all would work fine. There used to be mailmen but now there are letter carriers. Changing terms for gender equality in the workplace is one thing, but then there is the world of politics and sensationalism.

The one that always drove me crazy, and still does, is collateral damage. So, what, it makes it better if we say that people weren't blown to smithereens in a bombing but there was collateral damage from the bombing? Puhleese, it's still dead people. Who cares about the buildings. We care about people and it could easily be reported as people killed and a building destroyed. And while we're mentioning bombs, it's now an improvised explosive device. Did homemade bomb no longer cover the fact that some are made in the field? Perhaps we should call them field improvised explosive devises, or we could just say bomb. Oh and there is also the incendiary roadside device.

Who thought of these things? Is there a think tank being paid comfy salaries to come up with "better" words for roadside bomb and land mine? More words, more syllables, is somehow better. Someone out there must think these terms are more accurate, or maybe they're just more all-encompassing, therefore watering down the image of what really is happening.

It seems the areas where words take on longer, more sophisticated versions of themselves, is especially in the world of violence. War, bombing, terrorism, murder, rape. Oh yeah, rape. A person no longer rapes someone. They now sexually abuse them. Sexual abuse covers a larger range of issues, from butt pinching and fondling to brutal rape. Wait a minute. Brutal rape? Is any rape not brutal? Nope, but the media might say brutal rape. Maybe that's why they went to "sexual abuse" as the term; to cut down on the colorful adjectives. But sorry to say, rape is rape, no matter how you word it.

I can't help but see this double speak as some sort of attempt to be a polite society or to cover up the facts and keep people dumbed down. I've always been interested in language and etymology. I'm sure there are many more examples out there and maybe this is part of the era of political correctness but I fail to see what makes a longer description as more accurate. Sometimes a spade is just a spade.

…<insert your first name here> Gregory…    ::woosh::

Roughly one-third of our readers of Korean origin will be thinking, “Great, my last name is Kim so I’m set, right?”  Wrong, but try changing it to Kimberly.  Daniel Kim becomes Daniel Kimberly.  See what I did there?  Now you’re ready to open up that high-end barbershop in London you’ve always wanted.

The Scandinavians came close to surname perfection, whereby a child's last name is their father's first name, but they made the pivotal mistake of adding -son or -sen (called a patronymic ending).   This is epitomized in the name of Christian musician Brian Doerksen, the unfortunate son of Dork.

Some music I’d like to see later this year
Blue Note: Gal Costa beginning 9/30 and Ivan Lins beginning 11/18
Joe’s Pub: Raul Midon on 9/17, Gilberto Gil 9/22, Rachael Yamagata 9/25
And of course Ben Folds on 9/30

In nautical terminology, sailing by the wind means to sail within a roughly 180 degree arc of the wind - that is, sailing roughly into the wind. Wind is described in terms of its origin, so to sail by a westerly wind would mean to sail approximately west. Conversely, to sail large of the wind means to sail with the wind; a ship sailing large of the same wind mentioned above would be sailing roughly east.

In nautical terminology, if a ship was able to sail both by and large of the wind, it could sail in any direction. The earliest known print reference (of the phrase as an expression of unanimity) comes from Samuel Sturmy writing in a 1669 publication of The Mariners' Magazine.

"Thus you see the ship handled in fair weather and foul, by and learge."

References

• http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/by-and-large.html
• http://www.businessballs.com/clichesorigins.htm

Russia continues to occupy the former Soviet state of Georgia, despite agreeing to a cease-fire last week. "The Caucasus is a difficult and complicated place," one Russian political scientist told the Financial Times, referring to the small mountainous region between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea that comprises Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Wait, do white people really come from the Caucasus?

It's highly unlikely. There are scholarly disagreements about how and when some of our dark-skinned ancestors developed lighter skin, but research suggests humans moved across the Asian and European continents about 50,000 years ago. Some anthropologists think that natural selection would have favored lightening mutations as humans moved away from the equator and faced a diminished threat from ultraviolet exposure. In this case, it's possible that light skin would have evolved in many places independently.

So why do we call white people Caucasians? The term was popularized by the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, who in 1795 divided the human species into five races: Caucasian, the "white" race; Mongolian, the "yellow" race; Malayan, the "brown" race; Ethiopian, the "black" race; and American, the "red" race. He considered the Caucasians to be the first race on Earth, consistent with the common conception of the Caucasus as a place of human origin. The Bible describes Noah landing his ark at a place called Mount Ararat, which was thought by Europeans of Blumenbach's time to be on the modern Turkish-Armenian border. (Ararat is still the name of the largest mountain in Turkey.) In Greek mythology, Zeus chained Prometheus to a rock in the Caucasus.

Blumenbach considered the skulls of the Georgians to be the epitome of the white race, and he named the first class of humans after the country's home in the Caucasus Mountains. Blumenbach's class of Caucasians included most Europeans, Northern Africans, and Asians as far east as the Ganges Delta in modern India. As more scientists pursued racial classification in the 1800s, they relied on Blumenbach's nomenclature, cementing the region's legacy in anthropology.

For the entire article, click here.

The origin of the phrase is found in the Bible, in Exodus 3:8.

And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey: unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

The saying is thought to have first entered mainstream use in English around 1000AD, with Ælfric of Eynsham's transcription of Numbers 16:13. Due to the ubiquity of Christianity in western culture over the past two thousand years, the phrase remains more or less intact.

Milk and honey refer respectively to goat's milk and bees or grapevine or date tree syrup (in Hebrew these are all 'honey'), which were staple foods of the biblical Israelites.

This is the first etymology of the... well, hopefully we'll update this blog more than once a week, but we suffer terribly from laziness. Stay tuned.

References

• http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/brush_excerpts/brush_20040107.shtml
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86lfric_of_Eynsham

Why was A Chocolate Orange so called? What, exactly, were the Reservoir Dogs? And what, pray tell, is The Spaghetti Incident? An obscure but mysteriously cool name can add a heaping dose of cult appeal to your product. Make it too convoluted, though, and you risk becoming a laughing stock. An unremarkable pub in my unremarkable home town rebranded itself as the preposterous "Halcyon Quest" a few years, to much hooting derision from those who actually understood what it meant, and a nonchalant shrugging of shoulders from the legions of tracksuit-clad types who didn't, and who took their Stella-swigging business elsewhere.

No such balancing act at Bangkok's newest high-end restaurant, keeping it simple with the effortless moniker of "The Long Table", so called because it, well, has a long table in it. And why not - Beethoven didn't exactly struggle to come up with a clever name for his Symphony No. 9.

The prices of food and drink were surprisingly low - well above the Bangkok average, to be sure, but also appreciably below what you'd usually pay for similar. The Long Table scored highly for us on food, drink and ambience, but was let down by slow and absent-minded service. I suppose three out of four isn't bad, but you'd expect top marks at such a venue. At least it lived up to its name, if not quite its reputation!

The Long Table, 25th Floor, Column Tower, Soi 16, Sukhumwit Road, Bangkok

Tel 02 302 2557 www.longtablebangkok.com

The irony is that he has never used his, and I only recall using mine twice, once for gluing cat face's face on, and later as a cable needle for yet another pair of some ill-fated socks.

I was thinking that handy-for-tiny-craft sticks or cheese-and-pineapple sticks didn't really have a ring to them but then I thought

CANAPÉ STICKS

Think about it. Cocktail sticks are far more often used for skewering olives and lumps of cheese than they are in cocktails... and when they are, they're just as likely to be holding an olive or a tiny wee onion than they are something sweet. There's an accent in the title, which automatically means shops could charge twice as much for them; manufacturers could produce the same sticks, label them up as scrapbooking tools and charge twice as much again. You could get different qualities - standard, value (now with extra splinters), and first class (hand polished to a subtle sheen).

However, it wouldn't have cock in the name, and so I don't think this will ever catch on. Shame.

Like someone who is infamous....sounds kinda good at first glance, being famous and all, but it actually means being famous for a bad reason, like OJ. Not so good.

Well, IMHO this word sounds like it means invigorate (they sound sorta the same, right?)

WRONG! It means the exact opposite! Here it is in all its tender glory:

************************************
enervate \EN-ur-vayt\, transitive verb:

1. To deprive of vigor, force, or strength; to render feeble; to weaken.

2. To reduce the moral or mental vigor of.

Enervate is from the past participle of Latin enervare, "to remove the sinews from, to weaken," from e-, ex-, "out of, from" + nervus, "sinew."
Used in a sentence:
Beatriz de Ahumada soldiered on to produce nine more children, a tour of duty that left her enervated and worn.
-- Cathleen Medwick, Teresa of Avila: The Progress of a Soul
How about you, got any weirdies of your own to share?

August 10, 2008 - Many facets are involved with politics, and it's often difficult to have all the facts at your fingertips due to lack of brain activity or the amount of misinformation available tax-free to the public. Once I form an opinion on an issue, often somebody who is more intelligent than I comes along (usually his or her name is a foreign-sounding one, such as "Harvey," or "Renata") and presents a viewpoint or fact I hadn't considered. I'm older and more wrinkled now, so I frequently choose to wait longer before I create an opinion or logical thought.

Making my controversial views known is something I prefer to avoid. Life is stressful and my perspiration level increases when arguing politics or religion. Still, sometimes it's both important and necessary to express one's feelings, especially if they are strong or will cause vandalism or assault charges to be brought against oneself. That being said, today I feel the need to express my views on the English language and foreigners in America.

I strongly feel that a primary national language should exist in the world to ensure unity and communication among the citizens of the United States.

A broadcast by the BBC last week caused those feelings to float into my conscious mind and English heart. At first, I didn't notice they were talking in British, but I could detect a foreign presence in the room with me after listening more intently. I've been a Beatles fan for many years, watched several documentaries about their career, and been exposed to British culture and language through PBS and world maps. It surprised me very little that the foreigners I heard on the BBC sounded like English to my American ears.

I hereby propose -- in English -- that the English-American Federal Government exert more power and control; they should enact a law dictating a primary national language. The language chosen should definitely be the one with which I'm most familiar: English. I'm too old and dusty to learn another language. This is America. Everyone I know speaks English, except for some Mexicans, but they're usually not in my home talking and invading my English-speaking ears. If an occasion arises, however, when I've invited them into my living room, I'll be able to both hear and see them. From that vantage point, I can easily deduce if they're declaring war; if they're smiling and not holding a weapon, I know I'm safe, and perhaps about to be given a free tube of toothpaste.

Another issue regarding language bothers me. When I go onto the Internet, I don't like to see foreign words on my Chinese-made American-store bought computer monitor. In my English mind, if you are talking about the color red, then it's a color, but colouring my computer monitor with foreign words will make me see red. Humor is funny, but humour violates my English rights and liberties. My favorite food is yogurt, but I have no favourite foreign food (except for lasagna or lasagne).

I've already indicated I don't desire to manufacture more stress by making controversial statements, but I know a lot of people will agree with me, especially if they lack morals or effective reasoning skills. I know one person who would defend me -- if he were still alive: George Washington. He spoke British but that doesn't bother me since he was a Britain at the time, and a citizen of a British colony. And although by today's standards the Declaration of Independence is a foreign document printed on British paper, I find it acceptable because American words and thoughts hadn't yet been invented.

Some might think I should be locked away, or that I'm being a hyprocrite when I express my view that George Washington and his foreign friends speaking and writing in a different language doesn't bother me. To clarify, my reasoning suggests that they earned the right to speak differently from me because it was those British-Americans who were eventually responsible for creating America. Although they hadn't yet outlawed u's and outrageous dialects, they proved their patriotism when they helped George Washington realize his boyhood dream: to become the first resident of an unnamed country. Amidst the war, bloody battles, extreme living conditions, loss of life and limb, families destroyed, famine and pestilence, the name of America was quickly agreed upon in the spirit of bipartisanship and peaceful relations among co-workers, with no threat of sexual harassment or being exposed as an Internet pedophile.

We must remember to honor, not honour, the ideals and people who created our border. No English-speaking Americans should ever forget founding-foreigners like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and John Hancock (I don't know any Hancocks so that's likely to be a foreign name). Those British-Americans, along with many other people who made up the Continental Congress, all had an English-looking vision of rights, liberties, the pursuit of happiness and tax-free tea, and an end to carbonated beverage emissions and slavery by the year 1865 (The Emancipation Proclamation appears English, but "Abraham" sounds suspiciously Israeli to me).

I'm fully aware of America's deficit and its financially-challenged Treasury Department. Following this wrecked train of thought, I've taken the liberty of formulating a fiscal policy that will completely offset the extra cost of the increased hours and Congressional sweat required to legislate a national language policy. We need to immediately begin taxing free speech. Free speech is an abomination to a capitalistic society and to the free market economy fueling this country and the vehicles of elected officials. In addition to balancing any current money-laundering problems, it will save people time from wasted conversations with motor-mouths and help prevent them from saying or writing stupid things.

Rewriting the United States Constitution and Declaration of Independence to abolish free speech will be time-consuming work. The biggest task is to adjust my spell-checker; it's presently underlining all the British words in this document, indicating to me I've either spelled them incorrectly or it's stupid to spell them the way I have. Despite the obstacle of my spell-checker, I will generously donate my time to accomplish the task of performing a revision of our country's domestic and foreign policy. With my computer, I'll be able to finish in less time than it took George Washington to chop down his father's cherry tree and - as all good politicians do - wait until he was caught to apologize and admit to his crime. The only assistance I'll require must come from 55 English volunteers who are willing to commit forgery.

With hindsight we can forgive the errors in our two beloved .BTF (British Text Format) documents. George Washington was obviously adept at political maneuvering from an early age, but he was unable to escape from accountability. His punishment, to write 100 times, "It is not humourous to chop down my father's favourite tree" clearly traumatised him, and stayed with him for the rest of his life. As usual, we must blame the parents. The punishment Augustine Washington imposed upon George prevented him from being more selective regarding u's when helping to edit the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

My rewrite of these two documents will eliminate all superfluous u's, and change all the misguided s's and c's, thereby forcing history to be more readable by all patriotic English-speaking Americans. It will be printed on recycled paper using a printer built with mercury and using high amounts of energy. Feathers will only be used to remove dust from my keyboard and other carbon-emitting devices. The computer desk I'll use will be made in China, constructed of cherry wood in order to memorialize our heroic foreign General.

In closing, I'll add a few words on the related subject of immigration, another topic with which I struggle. I understand why it's controversial. I realize there are many disadvantages and advantages to allowing foreigners into our American country and onto our English-smelling soil. I don't know much about the economy, foreign policy, defence, people, or how to please a woman, but despite my lack of knowledge I'll do my best to give you an unsolicited opinion on this touchy subject.

With the heated debates today over immigration, it's ironic to me that during the British-American period I mentioned earlier, foreigners were actually brought over to our American continent against their will for the purpose of enslavement. In my best judgment, which is always questionable, we should not outlaw Spanish-speaking Mexicans and ban them from the English-speaking world, nor do I believe we should bring them here against their will (especially while gasoline averages $4.00 per American gallon, but I wouldn't change my mind even if gas was 10 cents per foreign liter). I think we should politely invite our Southern-American neighbors using imported English-written greeting cards. If they're able to read them and reply, they should be encouraged to cross our invisible border, and greeted warmly when they arrive. Neighbours, on the other hand, should be cast aside until they learn to read and speak English, regardless of whether or not they're Presidents or produce workers.

Finally, I'd like to say to all my readers, "Thank you very much, indeed, for reading this." I won't though, because inserting the word indeed is unwanted, redundant, unneeded, redundant, a waste of time and precious English letters, unnecessary, and not required. I simply have less patience now that I'm older and more cracked, like the Liberty Bell.

See Also:

• A new face for America