Month: September 2014
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dread
We need to talk about dinosaurs. There’s been a lot of big compound nouns in the news lately: ceasefires, outbreaks, airstrikes. But none has been bigger than the Dreadnoughtus: 85-feet long, 30-feet tall, and an I’m-still-growing 130,000 pounds, this newly discovered dinosaur is believed to be among the largest land animals to have ever lived (New York…
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punctuation, part i
Recently, I reviewed the delightful Punctuation..? by User design. Since school is back in session, I thought a review of punctuation marks–that is, the origins of their curious names–may prove timely and instructive. Many of the names for our punctuation marks exhibit a common trend we see here on the Mashed Radish, especially for scholarly or technical words…
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school
For most students across the states, school is back in session this week–if the luxurious leisure of summer has not already ceded to new seat assignments or syllabuses. (Yes, syllabuses: I think the perfectly functional English plural is just fine.) Many teachers, however, may take a lesson from the etymology of school. School With widespread cognates, the word comes down…
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