General Service Words Brought to You by The Beatles

Via: Voxy Blog

Homophonic Commas

A cereal comma -

Serial, cereal commas -

I am a believer in serial commas for their use in preventing ambiguities.

Thank you 22 Words for the image.

Word Up Weekly - Anachronym

This word was submitted by reader Marc L to "describe words like 'dashboard' (originally a board at the front of a carriage to protect passengers from debris thrown up by horses' hooves - now used for a panel on the interior of a car)."

anachronym

Urban Dictionary defines the word as "A combination of the words 'acronym' and 'anachronism'. There is no real definition because a combination of the two words makes absolutely no sense. Something Nicolette says when shes had too many Smifnoff Blueberry vokda cocktails."

I think that the Urban Dictionary user who submitted the definition had too many vodkas because he couldn't spell Smirnoff.

I also prefer to think of the word as a portmanteau of anachronism + -onym*

anachronism: a person or thing that belongs or seems to belong to another time

-onym: having a specified kind of name (English suffix from Greek)

Thank you Mark L, I like it.

*Definitions from The Free Dictionary

Two X and a X

A great example of naming a business with the help of a snowclone. Not only do we have "Two Men and a Truck" to help us move, we now have...

"Two Women and a Hoe" to help us garden.*

*Thankfully, the small print explained the purpose of the business because the name alone led me to believe that these people shouldn't be advertising in upstanding neighborhoods.

Interpreting a Foreign Idiomatic Reduplication

I recently watched the Argentine movie The Secret in Their Eyes and I can see why it won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. I absolutely loved it. The reason I mention the movie is a particular line of dialog that intrigued me.

The phrase "pata pata".

I immediately thought of the reduplicative, idiomatic English expression "chop chop", which to me means "hurry up". The way it was used in the movie seemed to go along with my interpretation. Then I looked it up and the confusion set in.

SpanishDict gives the following definitions for pata:

feminine noun

1. leg (pierna de animal)

• las patas delanteras; the forelegs


• las patas traseras; the hindlegs


• pata negra (cooking); = type of top-quality cured ham

2. foot (pie de animal); paw (de perro, gato); hoof (de vaca, caballo)

3. leg (informal) (de persona)

• a pata; on foot


• ir a la pata coja; to hop


• a cuatro patas; on all fours


• pata de palo; wooden leg

4. leg (de mueble); arm (de gafas)

5. (expresiones) (informal)

• estirar la pata; to kick the bucket


• meter la pata; to put one's foot in it


• poner algo patas arriba (también figurative); to turn something upside down


• tener mala pata; to be unlucky


• pata de gallo; hound's-tooth check material (tejido)


• patas de gallo; crow's feet (arrugas)

And msn encarta Dictionary gives the following for pata pata:

noun South Africa 1. dance sensual dance style: a dance style in which couples feel each other's bodies with their hands 2. music music for sensual dancing: urban South African dance music kwela which people dance to in pata-pata style 3. sex: sexual intercourse ( slang ) [Mid-20th century. < Xhosa and Zuluphatha "feel, touch"] ??? So apparently the reduplication of a word that appears to primarily reference an animal's foot or leg turns it a type of sexual dancing. Interesting. I welcome any explanations. P.S. As previously defined here on this blog "reduplication" is a morphological process that occurs in many languages to different degrees and for different purposes. Basically, it is the repetition of all or part of a word.

Word Up Weekly - ♥

♥ According to a recent post on Johnson, The Economist's language blog, the Oxford English Dictionary recently added a new "sense" under the definition for the word "heart". ♥: pronounced "heart", and defined as a transitive verb meaning "to love". Hmmm...

The Importance of Capitalization

From an e-mail I received - Those of us who fall into the world of hi-tech should take note of the importance of correct grammar, punctuation and capitalization. I have noticed that many who send text messages & email, have forgotten the "art" of capitalization. Capitalization is the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse.

Captcha This: Completely Automated Public Turing

Check out this New York Times article titled "Deciphering Old Texts, One Woozy, Curvy Word at a Time."

Not only does it provide the acronym-based etymology of the word captcha, it also explains how web readers are actually transforming old articles and books into computer text files every time they enter a captcha code on a website.

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Cool stuff.

Word Up Weekly - Skirl

Having never previously heard this word, when it showed up on my word-a-day calendar, I had a feeling that it would be onomatopoeic.

skirl (skûrl)

v. skirled, skirl·ing, skirls

v.intr.

To produce a high, shrill, wailing tone. Used of bagpipes.

v.tr.

To play (a piece) on bagpipes.

n.

1. The shrill sound made by the chanter pipe of bagpipes.

2. A shrill wailing sound.

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[Middle English skrillen, skirlen, probably of Scandinavian origin.]

Definition from The Free Dictionary.

Lipogrammatic Humor

If you are always straightening things, you have OCD.

If you are always eating things, you have OBCD.

The above joke that I received in an e-mail reminded me of the amusing and "progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable", Ella Minnow Pea, by Mark Dunn.

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Or, of course, CDB by William Steig.

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lipogram

n. A piece of writing from which all words containing a particular letter have been deliberately omitted.

pangram

n. A sentence that uses all the letters of the alphabet. ex. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Semiotics and Stale Bread

This falls under the following categories:

Where have I been all of my life?

And

You learn something new every day.

My son came home from school last week and asked me if I knew what the plastic tabs on loaves of bread meant. My response was, "yes, they are printed with the sell by dates." Little did I know they are color-coded by delivery date as well.

Snopes.com verified this newly-realized semiotic information for the plastic tabs and the twist ties.

According to Snopes, bread is delivered fresh five days a week to grocery stores: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Each day has its own colored twist tie or plastic tab. This color-coding is alphabetical based on the first letter of the color which is coordinated with the order of the days of the week.

Monday - Blue

Tuesday - Green

Thursday - Red

Friday - White

Saturday - Yellow

The main purpose of the color-coding is to help grocery-stocking personnel switchover the bread inventory in a more expedient manner.

Now that I have this new information, I will never purchase a loaf of bread with a blue tab or tie on a Saturday.

###

From a previous post: semiotics is the scientific study of signs and their linguistic meaning. It is about the relationship between a sign and what it represents. It is about how people determine the meaning of signs. In semiotics a sign is considered anything (a symbol, an icon, a sound, a picture and so on) that stands for another thing.

More on semiotics here.

Word Up Weekly - Youthquake

youthquake

n: a shift in cultural norms influenced by the values, tastes, and mores of young people.

Etymology: youth + earthquake. First known use: 1966.

All readers are invited to submit words - any type of words. Words that are fun to say, words that are out of the ordinary, words that are ordinary but have weird definitions...you name it, they are all welcome. Please submit via the comments button.

Definition from Merriam-Webster.

P.S. I usually prefer to use thefreedictionary.com for definitions because they do not inundate you with pop-ups; however, I really enjoyed seeing the suggested rhymes that Merriam-Webster offered with the definition of youthquake...

air brake, backache, beefcake, cube steak, handshake, heartbreak, mandrake, partake, uptake and windbreak to name several.

The Difference Between Good and Bad Writing

I recently read about a website called DifferenceBetween.net that promotes itself as the place to go to learn about the "difference between similar terms and objects." I love the concept and I had a feeling that the site would cover some language basics such as the difference between metaphors and synonyms, and indeed it does. There is even a link at the top of the main page to articles specifically about language and grammar.

...And then the disappointment set in.

I read a few of the articles and I could not believe how poorly they were written, and how many factual inaccuracies and typos there were.

Here is a sentence from The Difference Between Vowels and Consonants:

"Vowels are five letters and the spoken sounds associated with each of it."

In addition to this poorly constructed sentence, nowhere in this article does it mention that there is not a 1-to-1 correspondence between letters and sounds.

I should be clear that I did not read more than eight or nine articles when I checked out the site and not all of the articles were equally as disappointing. Many of them did have some general, helpful information. I also like the format that has each article ending with a numbered summary.

I realize, too, that because I am critiquing the writing of others, there are bound to be some tylos and grammagical erroars in my sriting. After all, it is Muphry's Law.