Oxford commas (2): Live dangerously – take our poll!

Do you use the Oxford (serial) comma? Here’s a sentence with the Oxford comma: My favourite foods are Greek yoghurt, salted almonds, cheese, and dark chocolate. Here’s the same sentence without: My favourite foods are Greek yoghurt, salted almonds, cheese and dark chocolate. And here’s one where, unless you change the order of the list …

Oxford commas (1)

I was puzzled last week to see references on Twitter to the exotic-sounding “Oxford comma”, a new term to me. It turns out (thank you, Mark Allen and  Oxford Dictionaries) that the Oxford comma is another name for the “serial comma”: an optional comma before the word ‘and’ at the end of a list: We …

If the shoe doesn’t fit (2): eggcorns and etymology

“Shoe-in”, Ben Zimmer points out, belongs to a special family of errors called “eggcorns”: misspellings, mis-hearings or misinterpretations of standard (often idiomatic) words or sayings. Their name itself derives from a misspelling of “acorn”. As Ben explains in Shifting Idioms: An Eggcornucopia, eggcorns might eventually reach folk-etymological permanence, or they might continue to be considered nonstandard …

If the shoe doesn’t fit: getting the etymology right

Ben Zimmer’s latest On Language column in the New York Times (Beach-Blanket Lingo, 5 August 2010) examines the terms used by coastal resort residents (from-heres) to describe summer visitors (come-heres). One term used for the latter is shoobies, explained thus by John T. Cunningham, writing in 1958: day-trippers from Philly took advantage of the $1 round-trip …

Teaching the language love

A number of recent articles in the UK and US press point to a lively interest in foreign language learning and teaching that isn’t necessarily reflected in our school pupils’ language uptake. Some of those articles are listed here: Foreign language study vital to U.S. students by Gene A. Budig (a former president of three …

Serendipity and the scents of war

I wrote the other day about scent, as one of my favourite words (serendipity’s another). Scent isn’t a word you’d normally associate with the war in Afghanistan. But it cropped up in a Radio Scotland programme, Black Watch, 3 Scots: A War in Their Own Words, recounting life in the Afghan war zones. The account takes …

…and the words the world just can’t abide

The British Council’s 75th anniversary poll of its students’ English language preferences also surveyed their least favoured words. The 10 most disliked English words were: Cancer Racism Corruption Terrorism Slavery Flatulence Killing Study Herringbone Fail Pretty understandable choices, although flatulence seems a far lesser evil compared with others on the list. But you can’t help …

English words the world likes…

My last post was about words we don’t like. This one’s about words we do. To celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2009, the British Council conducted a poll to find out its students’ favourite English words. The top ten were: Love God Peace Awesome Hello Freedom Gorgeous Sunshine Health Happiness In another poll, carried out …

Words that set our teeth on edge

I had a Twitter conversation recently with Ashleigh Grange of Plush Text Communications and Janine Libbey of P & L Translations about words we dislike. Ashleigh’s language bugbear of the day was incentivise, Janine’s prioritise and mine diarise. My current handbag-book for the train and doctors’/dentists’ waiting rooms is “The English Language” by David Crystal. I was surprised to find …

The UK’s sexiest accent? Parliamo Glasgow

In a survey by the Travelodge hotel group, 5000 Brits voted the Geordie accent (Newcastle and the north-east) the nation’s sexiest. They clearly don’t appreciate the finer tones in life: “Bahookie”, by the way, is a Scottish word for your bottom, behind, backside, or “rearward contours”. One look at the Glaswegians thronging the city streets …