Paul Welsh writes: Lord Butler’s report may have been produced for the British Parliament, but it is being poured over and digested around the world. What, though, is being poured? Scorn? I’m going to try some nice cold custard.
John Prescott was actually being extremely clever when he announced yesterday that Labour “will reduce and probably eliminate the homeless by 2008.” Eliminate, says the OED, comes from eliminare, to thrust out of doors, expel (e, out of + limen, liminis, threshold), so it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Mr Prescott was constructing…
There’s an interesting piece by Michael Obinna in the Nigerian Vanguard in which he complains of “errors of usage in Standard English [being] seen as Nigerian Standard English”, by which he means something distinct from Nigerian pidgins. Although Ethnologue has come across Australian standard English, it doesn’t seem to have heard of Nigerian standard English,…
The quote in all the obits for OED superhero Robert Burchfield is his description of English as “a monster accordion, stretchable at the whim of the editor, compressible ad lib”. Even if French dogs did like accordions as much as their masters are alleged to, it would do little to encourage the terminally oppressed Quebec…
While their government slowly adopts the values and systems of the modern West, I have noticed recently that some Chinese journalists seek inspiration in older practice. Here is an example from a report on a truck accident, entitled Mobbing for eggs in order to fool the editor and other progressives: Villagers rush to reave eggs…
With the Olympics only four years away, Beijing is keen to have us believe that Chinese policemen do not torture and kill dissidents and members of bizarre sects. Officer Liu Wenli, for example, was very keen on finding someone to teach him French: “Hi. Welcome to China. What can I do for you?” he greeted…
Apparently the Spanish language police may soon approve servidor (“server”), as well as some other important and popular web terms. What we need to know now is which word the trog who inhabits that dark, hot room in the basement of the Real Academia used when, some years ago, he made his original budget application…
There’s an article here which says that Cherif El-Shoubashy, first under-secretary for foreign cultural relations and president of the Cairo International Film Festival, has published a book called something like Long Live Arabic, Down With Sibawayh, Sibawayh being the Persian, Basra-trained linguist who, in al-Kitab, provided Arabic grammar with its tablets of stone. That was…
Those of you who share my support for the struggle against illegitimate power and privilege will have been delighted by the defeat last week in single combat of that decadent Spanish aristocrat, Rubén Ramírez Hidalgo, by a humble English poultry farmer, Tim Henman. (As you know, hidalgo (“nobleman”) is but a concertina arrangement of hijo…
It’s not very long, but just try saying it. (Found in the Dutch section of this page while updating this page. It refers to the apprentice of the guy who makes the keyholes for the locks on the collars of greyhounds. Or whatever: I’m not an expert in Dutch canine bondage products.)