michaeldietsch.com » Word-o-phile

Eyeroll

dietsch — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 13:41:17 +0000

I just overheard two guys at work discussing Tom DeLay’s resignation from Congress, and I must say, it’s hard to take such a conversation seriously when one of the guys keeps pronouncing indictment as in-'dikt-m&nt.

Word-o-phobe

dietsch — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 16:57:22 +0000

As if “blogosphere” weren’t already enough of an ugly and unnecessary word, Kurt Andersen now offers a coinage that makes life even less worth living: blogospherese.

Electrocution?

dietsch — Tue, 28 Dec 2004 13:24:58 +0000

Note to Gothamist, rest of world: Electrocution does not mean injury by electrical shock. It means death by electrical shock. If you don’t die, you haven’t been electrocuted.

This may seem like pedantry, but if bloggers want to claim to be journalists, they need to be able to distinguish clearly between death and non-death. Allowing readers to believe that dogs have been killed when they’ve merely been injured is inaccurate reporting.

materteral

dietsch — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 13:47:19 +0000

Sometimes it seems like every college-degreed person in America, but me, is madly in love with this David Sedaris, who, frankly, I can’t stand. But that’s neither here nor there. Today’s Manhattan User’s Guide uses the word materteral, which–as is clear from the context below–is the “aunt” equivalent of “avuncular.”

In the old days, the voice of the holidays was the avuncular Burl Ives. Now, it’s the more materteral David Sedaris, which is progress in our book.

[The Mavens, on "materteral"]

bouquiner

dietsch — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 18:54:02 +0000

I think it’s funny that just after reading this article, by a book-collecting professor, I read today‘s French-Word-A-Day:

bouquiner (boo-kee-nay) verb
1. to hunt after, to collect, old books
2. (informal) to read

I really need to read more after work, and I definitely should start studying French again, but I’m always tired and the TV’s so distracting. Sigh.

eleemosynary

dietsch — Tue, 05 Oct 2004 19:01:49 +0000

“But Cash didn’t go to Folsom for purely eleemosynary reasons.” From When the Jailhouse Rocked (washingtonpost.com)

M-W.com: “eleemosynary — of, relating to, or supported by charity”

Word-o-phile: Spanish Popeye

dietsch — Tue, 28 Sep 2004 16:25:26 +0000

Spanish Popeye describes a loophole in New York City law regulating the adult-entertainment industry. The law permits a business to operate outside adult-entertainment zones if at least 60 percent of its merchandize is not X-rated. The Times explains that the term is a coinage of Robert Sacklow, a buildings inspector who once found eighteen thousand copies of Popeye cartoons dubbed into Spanish, in a sex shop with “only” twelve thousand porn videos.

Irrefragable

dietsch — Mon, 09 Dec 2002 22:32:32 +0000

irrefragable: Dictionary.com Word of the Day. irrefragable [Dictionary.com Word of the Day]

I don’t mean to brag, but it’s rare these days for me to run across a non-technical word that I’ve never seen before. (By non-technical, I mean words that don’t derive from science or mathematics or engineering. Anyone can aim the name of a chemical compound my way.)

Irrefragable makes me very happy.

Blog linguistics

dietsch — Wed, 26 Jun 2002 05:58:47 +0000

Some comments on blog linguistics, because several people have asked me what the term means or whence it arises: Peter Merholz coined the term in early 1999. Linguist Geoffrey Nunberg defends the use of the word [RealAudio file]. And now there’s news that the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary have drafted an entry for the word blog for inclusion in their venerable reference.