Tag: language
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Language “for the birds”: New guest post at Oxford Dictionaries
I have a new guest post up on Oxford Dictionaries’ OxfordWords blog. This one is called “Language ‘for the birds’: The origins of ‘jargon’, ‘cant’, and other forms of gobbledygook.” Here is a sample: ‘Infarction’? ‘Heretofore’? ‘Problematize’? Cathexis? Disrupt? Doctors have their medicalese, lawyers their legalese, scholars their academese. Psychologists can gabble in psychobabble, coders in technobabble. For people outside…
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bunting
Forget fireworks: Nothing says “Fourth of July” like bunting. Gazebos and porches, ready your railings for some…cloths for sifting flour? Bunting The OED first cites bunting in 1742 in a naval context, naming the worsted cloth used to make flags. Now, bunting can name an individual flag and flags more generally. I tend to associate bunting with the semi-circular flags displayed…
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robe
Last week, the US Supreme Court issued a landmark decision, declaring a right to same-sex marriage all across the Union. Court analysts have been going beneath the robes of the justices, especially Justice Kennedy in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, to deepen our understanding of the man and mind behind the opinion. Let’s go beneath the word robe for an etymological ruling. Robe Robes…
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flag
In the wake of the Charleston church shooting, the United States has been examining the place the Confederate flag should have in American culture. Any arguments in favor of it on public grounds are flagging, shall we say. The etymology of the word certainly doesn’t aid the rebel cause. Flag According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), English has been flying flag since…
Mashed Radish 