A few months ago in alt.fan.miss-manners someone confessed ignorance that Hortense is feminine. That sent me to the books to learn its etymology. From E.G.Withycombe, The Oxford Dictionary of English Christian Names, I learn that the Hortensii were a Roman gens (~clan). From the Oxford Classical Dictionary I learn of a dictator and a senator both named Quintus Hortensius.
did the wabbit ever learn what updock is?
I am advised by World Wide Words that Oxford University Press have just published a Dictionary of Catchphrases. Joy at the availability of a reference that could soothe many a mental itch is diluted by a touch of “Is nothing sacred?”. (Is there a word for the emotion expressed in that question?)
Someone wrote to my favorite list,
I received this spam today. Does anyone know what language it is? (And is there a tool, pref. on the web and free, that can take a piece of text and guess what language it’s written in?)
I’d never have thought to look for such a tool, but Lance Nathan came through with three:
I was thinking about English spellings of Indian names when this hit me:
Does Chatterjee mean something like quadruply honored ?
I did not know that Astronomy Picture of the Day is mirrored in multiple languages. (That list misses at least one: romanised Russian.) I stumbled onto the mirrors while seeking the origin of the name of a feature on Venus. Ought to have remembered to try the USGS Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature, which says Atete is a fertility goddess of Ethiopia.
A while ago I used the phrase “. . . Senator Feinstein would screech . . .”. It now occurs to me that if the senior Big Gummint Democratic Senator from California were a he I’d probably have used the word “howl”.
I guess the Gender Sensitivity-in-Language Police don’t read me regularly.
Just think: after tomorrow we may never hear that hideous pleonasm “one year anniversary” ever again.
I can dream, can’t I?