Category Archives: humanities

a kind of sprachbund

Wikipedia tells more than you might imagine asking about the heavy metal umlaut. (Cited by Desbladet in a comment on John Holbo‘s blog.)

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yet another hot trend bewilders me

So is a metrosexual someone who wants to get it on with his (or her) mother, or like her (or his) mother?

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foo

Bad advice, running around loose. In utterly unrelated news: This week I shared an office with someone who sounds to me as if she’s from some unfamiliar part of Australia but is in fact from Derby. Learn something every day.

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should be better than the crowd

Michael Quinion of World Wide Words has a book out.

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and more to come

Brian Micklethwait took a mess of pictures of the EU complex in Brussels. One that caught my eye shows the words “European Parliament” in eleven languages, leading me to ask myself what rule decided the sequence. It appears to be … Continue reading

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speech codes

You’ll leave your cultural literacy at home if you know what’s good for ya! “Sorry, You Forgot To Give Me A Lobotomy With My Nametag” I feel somewhat better now about missing so much Eighties television.

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the former future prime minister

I’ve often mocked The Media for saying “former Italian prime minister” (what kind of prime minister is he now?) and so it is mildly disappointing that I won’t get to apply the phrase to Mrs Gandhi. The Agonist (cited by … Continue reading

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