Daniel Soar
on the militarisation of metaphor:
Spies aren’t known for their cultural sensitivity. So it was a surprise when news broke last month that IARPA, a US government agency that funds ‘high-risk/high-payoff research’ into areas of interest to the ‘intelligence community’, had put out a call for contributions to its Metaphor Program, a five-year project to discover what a foreign culture’s metaphors can reveal about its beliefs.
posted by jack_mo
on Jun 27, 2011 -
41 comments
Climate change and the vuvuzela leave mark on Oxford Dictionary of English. Other words and phrases introduced for the latest edition include 'toxic debt', 'staycation', 'cheesebal' and 'national treasure'. To balance them out among the 2,000 or so new items there are a few more left-field choices.
Among them are 'cheeseball', which refers to someone or something lacking taste, style or originality, and the more disturbing phenomenon of 'hikikomori', the Japanese word for the acute social withdrawal that occurs in some teenage boys.
posted by Fizz
on Aug 19, 2010 -
18 comments
Java Demo: "four-letter words have a special status in the english language and culture. counting in at over 1650 words,...this small project is an attempt to give a spacial overview of the entirety of this part of english language heritage, as well as to explore and visualize relations between all those words."
posted by hortense
on Jun 4, 2009 -
18 comments
Why would an evolutionary biologist study words? It turns out there is an
astonishing parallel between the evolution of words in a lexicon and the evolution of genes in an organism. The word
two, for example, has been around much longer than most, and will likely be with us for millennia, whereas the comparatively rare and recent word
dirty has undergone many mutations, and will probably be extinct in a few hundred years. Professor
Mark Pagel, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Reading, UK, tells us why on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's program
As It Happens. Pull slider to 16:00 to start the
seven minute interview.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium
on Mar 7, 2009 -
49 comments
International House of Logorrhea, at
The Phrontistry, a free online dictionary of weird and unusual words to help enhance your vocabulary. Generous language resources,
2 and 3 letter Scrabble words l
The Compass DeRose Guide to Emotion Words l all kinds of glossaries for
color terms,
wisdom,
love and attraction,
scientific instruments,
manias and obsessions,
feeding and eating,
carriages and chariots,
dance styles and all kinds of fun word stuff.
[more inside]
posted by nickyskye
on Jan 11, 2009 -
12 comments
Confusing Words is a collection of 3210 words that are troublesome to readers and writers. Words are grouped according to the way they are most often confused or misused.
posted by blue_beetle
on Aug 11, 2008 -
76 comments
The Dictionary of Coming to Terms with the Past (
Wörterbuch der 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung') examines over 1,000 German words that have Nazi connotations, such as
Endlösung (Final Solution) and
Selektion, It is featured in a
review by der Spiegel. Such loaded words still constitute a minefield for Germans today, as the Archbishop of Cologne
discovered last year in a situation
analogized to Senator Biden's use of the term "articulate" when referring to Senator Obama.
[more inside]
posted by Rumple
on Feb 17, 2008 -
49 comments
"The old, mean man" vs. "The mean old man." Here's an aspect of English (and other languages) I've never thought of before. If you're using a string of adjectives, there's a natural order for them to appear in: "opinion :: size :: age :: shape :: color :: origin :: material :: purpose". (Although I find "old, mean," due to it's strange order, sort of striking.) [more info:
1,
2,
3]
posted by grumblebee
on May 19, 2007 -
91 comments
Pompous Ass Words is a site dedicated to identifying words that shouldn't be used, on the grounds that doing so makes you sound like a pompous ass. With humorous citations and links to examples of pompous word usage by the media.
posted by amyms
on Jan 27, 2007 -
202 comments
Wordie: social networking... for words. Catalog your favourite (or least favourite) words — make any variety of word lists, and connect to other users using the same words. Silly, but fun!
posted by Robot Johnny
on Nov 29, 2006 -
12 comments
Were you a
minger, sporting a
mullet, looking a bit
naff when you were getting
mullered while out
on the pull, anytime before 1988? Or were you
posh and
minted, looking
snazzy after spending your
dosh to get a
nip and tuck before 1980? If so, the Oxford English Dictionary and the
BBC need you for their
Wordhunt – a call to help find the earliest verifiable usages of a
list of words from the past decades whose origin is still uncertain.
posted by funambulist
on Jan 9, 2006 -
28 comments
Merrian-Webster open dictionary "Have you spotted a new word or a new sense for an old word that hasn't made it into the dictionary yet? Well, here's your chance to add your discovery (and its definition) to Merriam-Webster's Open Dictionary"
posted by robbyrobs
on Dec 11, 2005 -
22 comments
Charming and unexpected vocabulary from many languages. Why did Persians need a word,
alghunjar, to express 'the feigned anger of a mistress'? Could there really have been that many insincere mistresses in Persia? Why does Russia need a word meaning, 'dealer in stolen cats'? Or 'someone with six fingers'? And who can resist the Chinese
xiaoxiao, meaning, 'the whistling and pattering of rain or wind'? "These are more than funny foreign vocabularies; they are tiny windows into the way other people live, and the obsessions that drive them."
[via]
posted by Slithy_Tove
on Oct 2, 2005 -
89 comments
Weasel words 'Spare Don Watson, author of Death Sentences from all of these weasely, wishy-washy, and worst of all, ugly bits of management-speak that have drifted out of consulting sessions and into the social realm.' Forbes.com.....................
Your favourite
spin doctoring ?
posted by johnny7
on Sep 6, 2005 -
31 comments
A picture of English nouns is a map of 33,000 English nouns. Each tiny rectangle corresponds to a noun. The color of the rectangle has been assigned a color, based on an internet image search for that noun. The words are clustered so that similar words are near each other.
Gallery. (Java required)
posted by jikel_morten
on Aug 14, 2005 -
30 comments
Looking for
ohibitutic and
purspermal words, but need something a little more
rhymmeal?
Cromulac might just be the
tingulen you're
spranning for.
posted by Robot Johnny
on Jan 7, 2005 -
17 comments
Collins Word Exchange "At Collins we pride ourselves on reflecting current language, used by real English speakers across the world."
Collins have launched a public forum designed for (amongst other things) discussing 'new' words and the legitamacy of their inclusion in official dictionaries.
Chav is probably on its way, but I'm no intellectual snob, but
bounce-backability? Even I'd balk at that one.
And, just remember kids,
flip-flopper is not valid for use in scrabble
posted by qwerty155
on Dec 16, 2004 -
8 comments
Etymology-wise, which hormone is an island? What word both denotes a prime and euphemizes Satan? What word denotes "the future" and abbreviates the unknown? Is urine pith? These are some of the questions from "
Moot: The World's Toughest Language Game," a homemade and little-known board game for lovers of words.
Some puzzles are available online; there are a few more available on a page detailing the
interesting story behind the game's creation. You can
sign up to have a new language puzzle e-mailed to you every week.
posted by painquale
on Dec 4, 2004 -
8 comments
More on arithmetic in the Amazon The 10/15 issue of Science has the official publication of Peter Gordon's work on numerical cognition among the Pirahã, and a companion article by Pierre Pica et al. on similar research among another Amazonian tribe, the Mundurukú. What with the U.S. election and the discovery of H. Floresiensis, this is not getting nearly as a much play as the pre-publication back in August of Peter Gordon's work.
Brian Butterworth has an
piece in the Guardian about both articles, and I've put some links, quotes and diagrams
here.
Compared to the reports on the Pirahã, the Mundurukú people, language, and experiments are all somewhat different, although the conclusions are broadly similar.
posted by myl
on Oct 31, 2004 -
19 comments
If you don't like dictionary posts, look away, NOW!
But if you like to play with words, the dictionarians at
Merriam-Webster have announced the winners in their poll for the
Ten Favorite Words for 2004:
defenestration,
serendipity,
onomatopoeia,
discombobulate,
plethora,
callipygian,
juxtapose,
persnickety,
kerfuffle and
flibbertigibbet
Also, a list of runners-up with more of my personal faves: oxymoron, copacetic, curmudgeon, conundrum,
euphemism, superfluous, and of course, Smock! Smock! Smock!
[more inside]
Via vidiot.
posted by wendell
on Jun 12, 2004 -
41 comments
