Month: August 2014
-
Bongo Bongo
If you’re a fan of the Mashed Radish, you’ll definitely want to fire up some episodes of Bongo Bongo. Magnet Media brought to my attention Bongo Bongo, a weekly web series from PBS Digital Studios whose host and writer, Ethan Fixell explores “the etymology and cultural impact of popular words we use.” (You had me at PBS.) It airs every Tuesday,…
-
loot
Some etymologies drive the point home perfectly–and others have a way of bringing it all together. Such is the case with the word loot, which has surfaced–and I think in an insidiously racialized manner–amid the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri. Its origin, however, is far, far away from the American Midwest. Loot Loot derives from the Hindi lut, meaning “spoil,”…
-
Ferguson
Sometimes etymologies just drive home the point perfectly. Ferguson, Missouri is named for one, William B. Ferguson, who allowed a railroad to go through his land in 1855. A train depot thereafter built there was named for him as part of the deal. The city–and now central station of an urgent debate on police militarization and racial inequality in the…
-
Punctuation..?
A Review of Punctuation..? I was recently delighted to receive in the mail a copy of Punctuation..?, an illustrated guide to punctuation marks, published in 2012 by UK book designer, User design. At 35 pages, it concisely treats 23 distinct punctuation marks, from the everyday comma to the more arcane interpunct (inter·punct). If at times imperfect, its explanations are accessible and helpful. Its illustrations are…
-
comedy & tragedy
Comedy & Tragedy According to Mallory and Adams in The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World, there are 24 distinct verbs concerned with speaking in Proto-Indo-European. But if headlines these past weeks have been any measure, we all feel a bit speechless in our great many daughter Indo-European languages. One such root for speech is *wed-, which…
Mashed Radish 