Language

I swear a lot. I’ll be the first to admit it. I’m the worst person to have around your kids because I swear so casually that I don’t notice I’m doing it. I do try to remember when kids are around, but even that bothers me to some degree. They’re just words. Though I...
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Check this out from Lamebook.com: 420, pronounced four-twenty, is an American counter culture holiday. It’s the day you’re supposed to get stoned. According to lore (wikipedia), the term was coined from a group of teenagers at San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California in 1971. The teens would meet after school at 4:20...
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This is highly offensive and also highly correct. It is also highly pertinent in this internet age of laziness. If rude words offend, don’t read it. Edit: I didn’t make this. I neglected to mention that I stole it from here. .
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Further to the interesting discussion following this post, I was interested to read today over at Visual Thesaurus that “tweet” has been named the word of the year and “google” (in its verb form) has been named word of the decade. Given that Google are actively campaigning against the use of “to google” as...
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From the awesome Failblog. Well done, madam. Well done indeed. .
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I saw this over at Locus Online today. Apparently Google is launching its new phone with an Android operating system and calling the phone the Nexus One. Philip K Dick’s estate are upset about it claiming that Google is appropriating Dick’s work (his novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep which was used as...
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There are a few words that are commonly misspelled or simply used incorrectly. I’m quickly becoming a fan The Oatmeal comics and today they’ve got a good list of ten commonly misspelled words, along with that special brand of Oatmeal drawing and comedy. The words they cover are: Lose/Loose Weird not Wierd Their/They’re/There Your/You’re...
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I am so often entertained by the search results that apparently lead people to my website here. I’m a bit of a nerd for stats and searches and things like that, so it’s always a bit of fun for me to check. The top search results leading people here over the last week are:...
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My good friend and IT lifeline, James Frost, sent me this. According to The Register, the New Oxford American Dictionary’s 2009 Word of the Year is “unfriend”. As in, “Me and Haley had this huge, like, fight and stuff so I totally unfriended her on Facebook.” The actual entry is: Unfriend: verb; to remove...
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I have to thank Michael over at aNadder for this one. I’m a big fan of collective nouns. There are the old favourites like a murder of crows or a parliament of owls. But what about collective nouns for supernatural creatures? We’ve all heard of a host of angels. Well, thanks to Michael pointing...
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