The Awl compiles a history of profanity at The New Yorker. Padgett Powell once said that the usage rules used to be so restrictive, he was forced to change "big-butt sheriff" to "big-bubba sheriff" in "The Winnowing of Mrs. Schuping" (1991; great story).
posted by maud on May 31, 2011 - 13 comments

A Tranquil Star ...for a discussion of stars our language is inadequate and seems laughable, as if someone were trying to plow with a feather. (via)
posted by grateful on Feb 6, 2007 - 11 comments

Sure, it's just more Bush-bashing, but it's gussied up durn pretty. Philip Gourevitch on Bushspeak.

He is grossly underestimated as an orator by those who presume that good grammar, rigorous logic, and a solid command of the facts are the essential ingredients of political persuasion, and that the absence of these skills indicates a lack of intelligence. Although Bush is no intellectual, and proud of it, he is quick and clever, and, for all his notorious malapropisms, abuses of syntax, and manglings or reinventions of vocabulary, his intelligence is—if not especially literate—acutely verbal.

posted by grrarrgh00 on Sep 10, 2004 - 87 comments

I was plussed. It was concerting to see that she was communicado... An 1994 New Yorker story chock full of presumably sensical words that look wacky without their negating prefixes. A Smackeral from the great beebo.org
posted by stupidsexyFlanders on Oct 22, 2003 - 24 comments