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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
intro
introduction
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Idiom of the Day
hit a brick wall
To come up against an immovable or insurmountable difficulty or obstacle. Watch the video
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Learn English Through Football Podcast: 2024-25: Spursy
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ommercial giant. For example, I was familiar with the original logo, which some squeamish folks were scandalized by: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSi5DTaydtXhHlUAVgUpMHTpsmKTYZI6dmCBQ&s Miriam Robbins Dexter and I did a deep dive into the history and prehistory of this figure in Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia (Cambria, 2010).
One thing I did not know about Starbucks was the origin of its name. Maybe, just maybe, the young Washington entrepreneurs picked up their tantalizing, quaint name from that remote, little town in the southeastern corner of their state. Let's see what Google (and its doppelganger AIO) have to say on this matter.
The name Starbucks comes from a man's fondness for watching deer and the way the larger males moved around, which he called his "star bucks". His wife suggested the name for the coffee chain when he opened his first store, and he thought it was a good fit for a place where people could relax.
The name Starbuck may also refer to:
*
* An Old English name that means "from the river where stakes were got"
* A variant of the name Tarbuck with a prosthetic "S-"
* A founding family of Nantucket who became a whaling dynasty
The first Starbucks store opened in 1971 near Pike Place Market in Seattle, and was founded by Jerry Baldwin, Gordon Bowker, and Zev Siegl.
The Washington town, by the way, was named after railroad official W. H. Starbuck.
Here's what is claimed about the firm's name in Starbucks Archive:
In 1971, our founders got together with artist Terry Heckler to define their new brand. They wanted the company’s name to suggest a sense of adventure, a connection to the Northwest and a link to the seafaring tradition of the early coffee traders. Co-founder Gordon Bowker, a writer, initially proposed calling the company “Pequod,” after the ship in Herman Melville‘s classic novel “Moby-Dick.” But Terry objected – would a cup of “Pee-kwod” appeal to anyone?
The brainstorming continued. While researching names of mining camps on Mt. Rainier, one of the best known landmarks near Seattle, Terry came across “Starbo,” which eventually led the team back to where they’d started. In “Moby-Dick,” the name of the first mate on the Pequod was, you guessed it, Starbuck. A brand was born.
Under "Starbo", here's what The Etymology Nerd has to say about the origin of the name:
On the Starbucks website, it says that the name of their company was inspired by Starbuck, the First Mate of the Pequod in Moby Dick. This was meant to evoke "the romance of the high seas and the seafaring tradition of the early coffee traders", but apparently there's more to the story. According to Starbucks co-founder Gordon Bowker, the idea came to him when he and some others were brainstorming potential brand names starting with st- (because an advertising executive thought those were more powerful) and somebody pulled out a mining map of the Cascade range. They pointed out a town named Starbo, and that reminded Bowker of the literary reference. The name worked perfectly for another reason, too: Starbuck Island is a coral atoll in the Pacific known for its shipwrecks, and the company's logo is a siren, which lures sailors toward shipwrecks.
For more information on the Starbucks name, see this Independent article (they almost called it Cargo House, which would have been a horrible mistake).
Wanting to go one step further, I asked Google > AIO what the origin of the Starbuck surname was, and the following response popped up instantaneously:
The surname Starbuck is of Old English origin and means "from the river where stakes were got". The name originated in the Middle Ages when people were often named after their place of residence or occupation.
The Starbuck family was prominent in the history of whaling in the United States from the 17th to the 19th centuries. The family was based in Nantucket, Massachusetts and some members became well-known for discovering islands in the Pacific Ocean[...]
Language Log
Aurora (Colorado and Borealis)
Jonathan Weisman, "As Trump Arrives, Aurora Insists It’s Not the ‘War Zone’ He Sees", NYT 10/11/2024.
And today's xkcd:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/solar_protons_2x.png
Mouseover title: "If any of you want to meet some cool local oxygen atoms, I can introduce you!"
Google News thinks "Aurora" this afternoon is mostly about the effect of the solar wind on the magnetosphere:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/GoogleNewsAurora.png
Trump's Aurora rally shows up as numbers 11-14 in the list:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/TrumpAurora11.png
[h/t John Berenberg]
And there's some interesting discussion of solar protons in a book (partly) by another web-comic author, namely Kelly and Zach Weinersmith's A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through?:
The Sun Wants You Dead
As a radiant ball of plasma, the Sun already spends most of its time blasting out hot ions in every direction. Earth’s magnetosphere and atmosphere protect you from most of these. If you’re in space, all things being equal, you’d rather avoid solar radiation, but it doesn’t cause instant death. However, now and then, the Sun undergoes a “solar flare,” when it suddenly increases in brightness. And then there’s something worse: sometimes a solar flare is accompanied by a “solar particle event,” which is a particle event in the same sense that a tsunami is a water event. Visualize a relatively small region of the Sun suddenly ejecting a huge stream of protons that move in one direction like a flashlight beam of death. The good news about these things is that, as science fiction deity Douglas Adams put it, “Space is big.” Randomly aimed death beams will likely miss a teeny tiny human ship. But if you happen to be caught in the headlights, the result will be acute radiation sickness, whose symptoms include vomiting, skin burns, heart issues, lung damage, compromised immune system, and—if the dose is large enough—a painful death.
You may wonder what the plan is if you happen to be aboard a spaceship for this sort of thing. For near-term efforts to go back to the Moon, the procedure in the words of NASA scientist Dr. Kerry Lee is to “make use of whatever mass is available.” That is, redistribute whatever stuff in the spacecraft or station that you can find because it is now your radiation shield. Why not a dedicated radiation blocker? Because that’s a huge amount of mass that costs a lot to send to the Moon and then just sits there. Space settlements will need to do better, and as we’ll see the likely solution involves living underground. […]
Current estimates say that once you leave Earth’s protective atmosphere and magnetosphere, every single cell nucleus in your body will be struck by a proton every few days, and by a larger charged particle every few months.
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: robust
This word has appeared in 1,321 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
have on (2)
If you have something on at a certain time, you've arranged to do something at that time.
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Word of the Day
auxiliary
Definition: (adjective) Functioning in a supporting capacity.
Synonyms: subsidiary, supplemental, supplementary.
Usage: The main library and its auxiliary branches serviced the needs of the large community.
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ough for the Snake River (for now; I may find additional information as I continue to follow its serpentine path through the mountains).
My brother and his partner were blessed to have lived for years not far from the Tri-Cities area in Walla Walla. Let's see what AI Overview has to say about the origin of its unusual-sounding name:
The name "Walla Walla" comes from a Nez Perce word that means "place of many waters" or "running waters":
*
* Place of many waters: The original settlement was located at the junction of the Snake and Columbia rivers.
* Running waters: The name may refer to the place where a small stream flows into a larger one, such as the convergence of Mill and Dry creeks in the Walla Walla Valley.
*
* Walatsa: A Nez Perce and Cayuse word that means "running".
The name was given to the settlement by the county commissioners on November 17, 1859. The settlement was originally named Steptoeville after Lieutenant Colonel Edward J. Steptoe.
The Walla Walla people, also known as Walawalałáma, are a Sahaptin* Indigenous people of the Northwest Plateau. [*There's that David Thompson early 1800s "Shawpatin" word again.]
[variant several minutes later] The Walla Walla people are an Indigenous group of the Northwest Plateau. Their name, Walawalałáma, translates to "People of Walula region along Walla Walla River".
Every time I look up "Walla Walla" on Google –> AI Overview, I get slightly different answers, so I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the one given above. History Link.org:
On November 17, 1859, Walla Walla County commissioners name the town that has grown up around the U.S. military Fort Walla Walla. They elect to name the town Walla Walla. The town begins with a rich history, which includes Native North Americans, fur traders, missionaries, soldiers, and pioneers. Walla Walla's earliest businesses are raising cattle and supplying the fort. The town will be incorporated and become the county seat in 1862. A gold rush followed by a growing agricultural industry will help Walla Walla become the largest city in Washington Territory by 1880. During the twentieth century, Walla Walla will continue to develop as an agricultural center for various crops, including wheat, onions, apples, peas, and wine grapes. The Time before the Town “Walla Walla” was a Nez Perce name given to one of the indigenous groups who lived in what is now the Walla Walla Valley. The name means “running waters” or, more specifically, the place where a small stream runs into a larger one. A number of rivers flow across the valley into the Walla Walla River and join the Columbia River. In addition to the Walla Wallas, native North American groups who lived in this area included the Nez Perce, the Cayuses, and Umatillas. In 1806, the Lewis and Clark expedition camped near the mouth of the “Wallahwollah river” on the Columbia and encountered the “honest and friendly … Wallah wallahs.”
I do scores, maybe hundreds, of Google searches every day. It is increasingly evident that AI Overview is doing more and more of the heavy lifting in replying to such routine searches, but also daring to take on esoteric topics as well. When responding to my queries, AI Overview does something cute before spewing out its responses — a flashing nanosecond whirl akin to cogitation, while formulating (putting / pulling together) what it is going to tell me. A cosmic dance. Utterly fascinating. Closing note
The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics (mind you!) went to two scientists, John J Hopfield (a physicist most widely known for his study of associative neural networks in 1982) and Geoffrey E Hinton (computer scientist, cognitive scientist, cognitive psychologist, known for his work on artificial neural networks which earned him the title as the "Godfather of AI"), for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks. The laureates themselves were astonished to hear the news that they were the recipients of the Nobe[...]
Language Log
Ai Overview: Snake River and Walla Walla
[N.B.: If you don't have time to read through this long and complicated post, cut to the "Closing note" at the bottom.]
Lately when I do Google searches, especially on obscure and challenging subjects, AI Overview leaps into the fray and takes precedence at the very top, displacing Wikipedia down below, and even Google's own responses, which have been increasingly frequent in recent months, are pushed over to the top right.
AI Overview, on first glance, seems convenient and useful, but — when I start to dig deeper, I find that there are problems. As an example, I will give the case of the name of the Snake River, and maybe mention a few other instances of AI Overview falling short, but still being swiftly, though superficially, helpful.
I'm in Boise ID, scouting out my route westward for the next month.
As I was scrutinizing the maps, my eye kept focusing on the Tri-Cities (Pasco, Richland, and Kennewick [about which I will likely have more to say in a future communication]) area of Washington state, trying to figure out why that minor conurbation developed there in the hinterland. Finally, I realized that it's probably because of its location at the confluence of three significant rivers: the Columbia, the Yakima, and the Snake.
Then I started to think, how did the Snake get all the way over in south central Washington State, when I've been following it for hundreds of miles to the southeast in Idaho? Tracing its path, I see that "snake" is indeed an apt name for that amazing river, though it's probably not the true etymology, which I shall write about below. The Snake River twists and turns through the mountains and high plains mimicking, for me, the movements of its erstwhile namesake. It's an amazing phenomenon of nature, carving spectacular canyons and deep gorges in the land as it wends its way, leaving in its wake impressive falls and cascades.
I wanted to see if the Snake got its name from its super-sinuous movement throughout the mountainous terrain. Naturally, I looked it up on Google ("Why is it called the Snake River"), and right away up popped AI Overview:
The Snake River is named after the Shoshone people, who lived along the river's banks and used a hand sign that European explorers misinterpreted as a snake. The sign actually represented swimming fish and meant "the people who live near the river with many fish".
The Snake River has also been called by other names, including: Lewis River, Great Snake River, Shoshone River, Saptin River, and Yam-pah-pa River.
I just noticed this sentence at the bottom of the AI Overview: "Generative AI is experimental."
Contrast the AI Overview answer with this from Wikipedia:
The river's modern name comes from a misunderstanding of the Shoshone Tribal Sign in PISL [Plains Indian Sign Language]. The Plains Indians referred to the Shoshone people as "Snake People", while the Shoshone are believed to have referred to themselves as "People of the River of Many Fish". However, the Shoshone sign for "salmon" was the same or similar to the Plains Indian common sign for "snake." The English name for the river was likely derived from this interpretation of the hand gesture, although it is uncertain when the name was first used.
Not very satisfying. Wikipedia usually does a better job with its etymologies (see, e.g., the "Appendix").
While we're at it, and nothing seems very definitive yet, we'll run through some other accounts of how the Snake River got its name, especially since some of them have interesting linguistic aspects. Here, by a man who has lived the Snake for more than four decades, Dave Hansen Whitewater: The Snake River Doesn’t Have Snakes!
Have you ever wanted to take a rafting trip on the Snake River but you were scared because of the name of the river? [...]
Language Log
English is innocent
Yesterday's guest post by Andreas Stocke, "English influence on German spelling", covered Duden's grudging admission that 's is allowed in certain restricted contexts, and noted the widespread negative reaction attributing this "Deppenapostrophe" (= "idiot's apostrophe") to the malign influence of English.
But Heike Wiese, via Joan Maling, sent a link to Anatol Stefanowitsch, "Apostrophenschutz", Sprachlog 4/26/2007, which offers a very different take.
Wann kamen die „Deppenapostrophe“ hinzu? Glaubt man den Apostrophenjägern, so muss dies in jüngerer Zeit geschehen sein, da ein intensiver Einfluss des Englischen sich erst seit dem Ende des zweiten Weltkriegs beobachten lässt, und die vemeintlichen Hauptschuldigen, die Elektronikmärkte, gibt es sogar erst seit dem Ende der siebziger Jahre. Eine schöne Erklärung, mit der man die Apostrophitis als eins von vielen Symptomen des „denglischen Patienten“ abhaken könnte.
Leider ist diese Erklärung falsch.
Der Genitiv-Apostroph findet sich bereits seit Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts, erst bei Eigennamen und bald auch bei Ortsnamen und anderen Wörtern. Der Plural-Apostroph findet sich seit dem Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts. Zunächst störte sich auch weiter niemand an diesen Verwendungen.
When did the "idiot apostrophes" come into being? If you believe the apostrophe hunters, this must have happened more recently, since the intensive influence of English has only been evident since the end of the Second World War, and the supposed main culprits, the electronics markets, have only existed since the end of the 1970s. A nice explanation that could be used to write off apostrophitis as one of the many symptoms of the "Denglish patient."
Unfortunately, this explanation is wrong.
The genitive apostrophe has been around since the middle of the 17th century, first in proper names and then in place names and other words. The plural apostrophe has been around since the end of the 18th century. At first, no one was bothered by this use.
Stefanowitsch's examples unfortunately don't go back to the 17th century, but they do include these, from someone who was neither an idiot nor a sufferer from Denglish disease:
In Friedrich Nietzsches Briefen und Notizen beispielsweise finden sich hunderte von Genitiv-Apostrophen:
Vielleicht sieht sich unser Gebahren doch einmal wie Fortschritt an; wenn aber nicht, so mag Friedrich’s des Grossen Wort auch zu uns gesagt sein und zwar zum Troste … (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches I/Nachgelassene Fragmente).
Ich gehe, seit einigen Monaten schon, jeden Abend von 1/2 10–11 in raschem Schritt durch Theile Venedig’s (Brief von Heinrich Köselitz an Nietzsche, 1882)
Aufs Kind die Hände prüfend legen Und schauen ob es Vater’s Art — Wer weiss? (Menschliches, Allzumenschliches I/Nachgelassene Fragmente)
In Friedrich Nietzsche’s letters and notes, for example, there are hundreds of genitive apostrophes:
Perhaps our behavior will one day be seen as progress; but if not, then Frederick the Great’s words may also be spoken to us, and indeed for consolation … (Human, All Too Human I/Posthumous Fragments).
For several months now, every evening from 10:30 to 11:00 I have been walking briskly through parts of Venice (Letter from Heinrich Köselitz to Nietzsche, 1882)
Lay your hands on the child and examine it and see if it is like the father — who knows? (Human, All Too Human I/Posthumous Fragments)
Stefanowitsch's account suggests that German apostrophe-phobia, like most cases of prescriptivist peeving, originated as the decision of a self-appointed authority, in this case Konrad Duden:
Erst ab Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts trafen diese Verwendungen auf Widerstand. Vor allem die Entscheidung Konrad Dudens, sie explitzit als regelwidrig zu behandeln, trugen zu ihrem Niedergang bei. Nicht jeder ließ sich allerdings von diesen Verbo[...]
Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
loaded (1)
wealthy, rich
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Idiom of the Day
brain surgery
A task requiring extreme intelligence, skill, or competence, usually used in a negative or rhetorical manner to indicate the opposite. Watch the video
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Drunk History vol. 1 (part 2) - Featuring Michael Cera (Inside The FOD Vault Episode 2)
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
take after
If you take after an older member of your family, you look like them or you have a similar personality to them.
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Word of the Day
whimsy
Definition: (noun) The trait of acting unpredictably and more from whim or caprice than from reason or judgment.
Synonyms: arbitrariness, flightiness, whimsicality, capriciousness.
Usage: She was an odd girl, prone to sudden flights of whimsy, and she floated through life cocooned in her own fantastic world.
Discuss
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.
…
In "Digging History" (3/22/14), a genealogical research website, there is an elaborate treatment of the surname Starbuck,
The surname Starbuck is believed to have Scandinavian origins. Norsemen (Vikings) came down to Scotland and Iceland between 800 and 1100 A.D. to plunder and terrorize. After a time these Vikings intermarried with women of the villages and later plundered along the coast of England.
According to Alexander Starbuck's History of Nantucket, “the name Starbuck is Scandinavian and signifies a person of imposing appearance, great or grand bearing.” In the Patronomyca Britannica there is a Norse name which is pronounced “Stor bokki”. "Stor" means great (body, soul and spirit) and "bokki" means great ;man (one with higher status and ranking). The spelling variations for this surname include "Starbocki", "Starbock", "Stirbock," "Stalbrook", "Sturbock", Styrbuck", just to name a few. One family historian suggested that "Starbuck" was finally settle[d] upon because it was easier to pronounce "Stahbuck".
I don't quite understand that last sentence.
In the end, it all boils down to Nantucket, whaling, clipper ships for the tea trade, and the sirens beguiling the sailors who traversed the seas to bring back the coffee, tea, and spices so much desired by Europeans and Americans. Plus, you see how important it is when choosing a brand name to take into account the greater power of initial st- over c-, even though the following two letters of both names (Starbucks and Cargo House) are -ar. As for the final -s, well…. Selected readings
* "Sitting in a Starbucks" (2/13/23)
* "Impromptu biscriptalism on a Starbucks cup" (9/8/17)
* "Biscriptalism on Starbucks cups, part 2" (9/16/17) — all the names on the cups, even the ones written in Chinese characters, end in
* "Star what?" (7/24/11)
* "Sorrbucks" (7/7/18)
* "All the lonely Starbucks lovers" (12/4/14)
* "Taylor Swift fanilect" (2/7/23)
* "Latte lingo: Raising a pint at Starbucks" (11/30/04)
* "Hoisting a couple of pints at Starbucks" (1/25/11)
* "Starbucks and Haidabucks" (3/20/04)
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Language Log
AI Overview: bits and pieces (German "ich" and Starbuck WA)
Things are happening very fast with this "experimental" internet search tool. I realize that it is a new technology, so naturally there are bugs and kinks that have to be worked out, and I don't want to be too harsh with it. Moreover, at a certain level, it is already serving a yeomanly purpose.
For instance, I asked Google, "should ich be capitalized in the middle of a sentence". AI Overview (henceforth AIO) promptly stepped in and provided the following straightforward response:
No, ich should not be capitalized in the middle of a sentence in German. In German, the first-person singular pronoun ich (I) is only capitalized when it is the first word in a sentence.
In English, the singular “I” is always capitalized when used as a first-person personal pronoun. This includes all contractions of “I”, such as “I'm” and “I'll”.
Other things to capitalize in the middle of a sentence include…. [details omitted here]
I checked AIO's reply against the following conventional resource:
Here's another way that German differs from English: You don't capitalize the personal pronoun ich (I), unless it is the first word in the sentence.
From:
"German Capitalization Rules" | FluentU Language Learning (Dec 14, 2023)
Fair enough. AIO quickly and serviceably answered my somewhat arcane question about German punctuation.
Nonetheless, AIO sometimes gets in the way. For example, it is now firmly fixed at the top of a large proportion of the searches that I do. Sometimes I specifically want to ask Wiktionary a question (e.g., part of speech; definition; etymology; etc.), but AIO will cannibalize Wiktionary and explicitly quote / summarize / paraphrase the latter, usually giving only the gist of Wiktionary's co-opted reply. Some recent searches that yielded such AIO results: "cathartic", "agonistes", and "inalienable".
Here's how Google, i.e., AIO, swiftly responded to the latter query:
According to Wiktionary, you can look up inalienable, inaliénable, or inalienability in the free dictionary.
Inalienable means something is impossible to take away or transfer, or that it is incapable of being surrendered. For example, you might describe someone's right to something as inalienable if it cannot be changed or taken away.
Here are some synonyms for inalienable: inviolable, absolute, unassailable, and inherent.
The word inalienable comes from the prefix "in-" and the word "alienable". The word "alienable" comes from the Latin verb aliēnāre, which means "to transfer by sale". The earliest known use of the word "inalienable" was in 1647 by historian and political writer James Howell.
The Declaration of Independence used the word "unalienable" to describe life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Not bad, randomly informative, but — in light of my specific query directed to Wiktionary — the first paragraph is tantamount to obtuseness.
Incidentally, as AIO was preparing its response, instead of the frantic whirling and twirling of previous days, now it just informs me politely that it is "generating", which I thought was neat, especially considering the fact that it is all done in a fraction of a second.
Now I really wanted to put AIO's quality and trustworthiness to the test. I decided to give it something hard and substantial to gnaw on.
In my romp through the northwest, I stumbled upon the tiny town of Starbuck, Washington (46°31′7″N 118°7′36W). Wouldn't you know it, the snaky, sneaky Snake River runs nearby!
"Ah hah!", I thought, "perhaps I know something that AIO doesn't!"
I was in Seattle around the time when Starbucks was founded (March 30, 1971 at Pike Place Market. Consequently, I knew quite a bit about the legend and lore of this little company that would one day become a global c[...]
Language Log
Ben Zimmer on Keywords
Christine Oh, "Wolf Humanities Center hosts linguist, columnist Ben Zimmer for lecture on 'keywords'", The Daily Pennsylvanian 10/11/2024:
The Wolf Humanities Center hosted Wall Street Journal language columnist Ben Zimmer at the ARCH building for a talk titled “Lexical Sleuthing in the Digital Age: On the Trail of Keywords and their Cultural Worlds” on Oct. 9.
Zimmer — who was a research associate at Penn’s former Institute for Research in Cognitive Science from 2005 to 2006 — gave a presentation on lexicology and linguistics followed by a question and answer session with roughly 40 attendees. The event drew a crowd of linguists and language enthusiasts from Penn's campus and the Philadelphia area.
Zimmer’s talk examined the origins of keywords, which he defined as “broad categorical terms with contested meanings.” He emphasized that keywords often become politically charged, and he takes cues to write about ones that are repeated in the news.
“Words in our language are constantly open to reinterpretation and re-signification,” Zimmer said.
Zimmer described his approach to writing language columns as “a form of narrative lexicography, telling stories about words from their origins to how they moved through various cultural, social, and political worlds.”
Throughout the event, Zimmer referenced the novel “Keywords” by Welsh writer Raymond Williams, which he cited as being particularly influential in his career with its synthesis of lexicology, linguistics, and culture. […]
Zimmer’s lecture was an installment in the Wolf Humanities Center’s “Forum on Keywords” program. Led by South Asia Studies professor Lisa Mitchell, the forum aims to explore the interdisciplinary study of mobile concepts and their evolving meanings across time, languages, and contexts. The center combines public events and seminars to investigate how keywords reflect historical forces, such as migration, colonization, and resistance, and consider the development of new lexicons in response to changing identities and fields of knowledge.
The Zoom version of Ben's talk was recorded, and I'll post a link to the recording if I can. The talk's abstract:
When Raymond Williams published Keywords in 1976, his reflections on culturally significant words were largely informed by entries in the Oxford English Dictionary. Indeed, an early inspiration for Williams came from looking up the OED entry for culture and seeing how the word's usage shifted over time. Nowadays, lexical sleuths who seek to understand a word's historical trajectory can take advantage of vast digital databases of books and newspapers, as well as other online troves of language use. We can now more fully appreciate the social, cultural, and political pathways of a keyword by following the trail of "text-artifacts" that it leaves behind.
The Keyword Forum's focus resonates with some keyword-adjacent aspects of Ben's academic background in anthropological linguistics. He spent a couple of years doing fieldwork in Java, with a special focus on "the methods by which Sundanese Muslims read, recite, translate, and interpret Qur'ânic Arabic", as reported in his 2000 paper "Al-'Arābīyah and Basa Sunda: Ideologies of Translation and Interpretation among the Muslim of West Java":
[T]he doctrine of Qur'ânic untranslatability raises new questions for scholars of Islamic discourse in non-Arab lands. First, to what extent does the localization and interpretation of Arabic allow the language of the Qur'ân to become "domesticated," and to what extent does it remain distant? Second, how have local interpretive methods of metalinguistic "glossing" been employed to explicate Qur'ânic Arabic word-by-word, phrase-by-phrase, or ayat-by-ayat? And lastly, how has this exegetic power been socially distributed in local hierarchies at different historical junctures and in different cultural milieux?
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Slang of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
babe
a good-looking young woman
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Idiom of the Day
breach of etiquette
A violation of established social norms or expectations, especially as relates to polite society or specific professions. Watch the video
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Funny Or Die (Youtube)
Thomas Edison was an asshole (Inside The FOD Vault Episode 2)
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l Prize in Physics. That tells you something about where we're headed. Selected readings
* "The unreasonable hilarity of recurrent neural networks" (5/21/17)
* "Generative linguistics and neural networks at 60" (11/13/17)
* "AI encroachments" (7/21/23) Appendix
Here, on "Sahaptin language (Name)", is a good example of Wikipedia showing its stuff (with plenty of footnotes [omitted from this post]).
Sahaptin is typically known as Ichiskiin in its various dialects. In the Yakama dialect, it is called Ichishkíin Sɨ́nwit, spelled variously Ichishkíin, Íchishkin, Íchishkink, or Chishkíin. In the Umatilla dialect, it is called Čiškíin or Ičiškíin.
The words Sahaptin, Shahaptin, and Sahaptian are derived from the Columbia-Moses name for the Nez Perce, sħáptənəxʷ. Cognates appear in other Interior Salishan languages, such as Okanagan sʕaptnx 'Nez Perce' or Spokane saʕáptni 'Nez Perce', indictating the ancient age of the ethnonym. The name Sahaptin has also been spelled "Shahaptin", "Sahapten", "Shahaptian", and "Shawpatin".
The first usage of the word "Sahaptin" dates to 1811, in the journal of fur trader David Thompson, who wrote of the "Chief of all the Shawpatin Tribes", referring to the Nez Perce. At the time, "Sahaptin" (and variants) was used to refer to the Nez Perce, while "Walla Walla" was used to refer to the Sahaptin-speaking peoples. Alexander Ross visited a large camp on the Walla Walla River later that year, identifying "the Walla-Wallas, the Shaw Haptens, and the Cajouses". In 1844, Horatio Hale wrote of the "Sahaptin or Nez-Perces" language and the "Walawala" language. At the same time, the Snake River was also sometimes called the Sahaptin River, because it led from the Columbia River to the country of the Nez Perce.
In the 1960s, the name "Sahaptin" was used by linguists, but it was rare for Sahaptin speakers to even be aware of the term. Most speakers used the terms Ichishkínk (Yakama) or Chishkín (Walla Walla and Umatilla), which mean literally "in this way/manner"
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Have no fear! As it turns out, the Snake does not actually have any snakes in it. Why, then, is it called the Snake? While some may think that the reason it is called the Snake is because its shape has many twists and winds similar to a snake, it is actually believed to have received its name from a Native American hand symbol. Brief History of Names of the Snake River
Throughout the years, many explorers gave different names to the Snake. In 1800, David Thompson first recorded the Native American name of the Snake as Shawpatin. Next, Lewis and Clark gave the name Lewis River or Lewis Fork in 1805. Other American explorers’ records after Lewis and Clark show a variety of names associated with the river. Various stretches of the Snake have held at least fifteen different names throughout the years. These names include the Shawpatin River, Lewis River, Mad River, Shoshone River, and Saptin River. It wasn’t until the year 1912 that the United States Geographic Board made official the name, “The Snake River.” The Snake River Got It’s Name From a Misinterpretation
Over 11,000 years ago, the Snake was a vital source of life for the Native Americans, specifically the Shoshones, that were living along the banks of the river. While they weren’t Snake River rafting as we are today, the Snake was very important to them primarily because of the salmon from the Pacific Ocean. The Snake was given its present day name when it was derived from an S-shaped hand sign made by the Native American tribe, the Shoshones. European explorers misinterpreted this hand sign representing swimming fish as a snake. This hand sign is now thought to have truly meant, “the people who live near the river with many fish.”
Still a lot of surmises, so now we turn to the Idaho State Historical Society, whose Reference Series, Number 38 (February 1964) begins thus:
The Snake River is named for the Snake Indians, through whose country the greater part of the river flows. The Indians, in turn, were named "Snake" by their Plains neighbors to the east, possibly because they reputedly used snake heads painted on sticks to terrify their Plains enemies. (At least the Blackfeet on upper Bow River reported finding such Shoshoni snake sticks in about 1784.) Or possibly the sign employed to designate the Snake Indians in conventionalized sign language—a snake-like motion—may have suggested the name to the Plains Indian. In any event, the name used to identify the Snake Indians in various Plains Siouan languages was the word for snake or rattlesnake. The French picked up the name from the Plains Indians, and the British, in turn, translated it from the French.
Although it comes from the Idaho State Historical Society, this convoluted explanation is not satisfying to me.
A Tri-Cities radio station (10/10/23) has a record of an earlier version of Wikipedia that gives an even more whimsical explanation of the Shoshone sign language for the river:
In the early 1800s, explorers from Europe, who were in direct contact with the Shoshone tribe, misinterpreted Shoshone sign language. The Shoshone people described the river using an “S” shape swimming motion with their hands. The explorers interpreted this motion as a snake, not realizing what they really meant was a “river of many fish” or Salmon. Another version from Wikipedia, says, “the sign language used by the Shoshones representing weaving baskets was misinterpreted to represent a snake”. The Basket River? The Weaving River? The Salmon River?
It would have been so much more helpful if the many European explorers who passed through this region had asked the Shoshone or other tribes who lived along the Snake how they said its name in their spoken language. As a matter of fact, we already apparently do have this datum, and that is David Thompson's 1800 [more likely 1811 — see below] "Shawpatin" (probable contraction "Saptin")*. I put it as a task for Native American language specialists to interpret what that means (but see the Appendix).
En[...]
ten beeindrucken. So soll Thomas Mann den Apostroph nach Lust und Laune weiterverwendet haben.
It was not until the middle of the 19th century that these uses met with resistance. Above all, Konrad Duden's decision to explicitly treat them as illegal contributed to their decline. However, not everyone was impressed by these bans. Thomas Mann is said to have continued to use the apostrophe as he pleased.
For a more recent and extensive survey of the topic, we should turn to a source that I've barely had time to skim: Luise Kempf, "Die Evolution des Apostrophgebrauchs: Eine korpuslinguistische Untersuchung." Jahrbuch für germanistische Sprachgeschichte (2019). My impression so far is that foreign names do play a pre-Duden role, as indicated in these tables: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/KempfTable2.png http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/KempfTable3.png But the recent influence of English is definitely not the whole story.
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Word of the Day
Word of the Day: synthesize
This word has appeared in 40 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year. Can you use it in a sentence?
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Phrasal Verb of the Day | Vocabulary | EnglishClub
sign in
to sign a register when you visit a place, or to log in when you visit a website
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Word of the Day
unequivocal
Definition: (adjective) Admitting of no doubt or misunderstanding; having only one meaning or interpretation and leading to only one conclusion.
Synonyms: univocal, unambiguous.
Usage: Franz complimented Albert, who looked at himself in the glass with an unequivocal smile of satisfaction.
Discuss
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Language Log
Graphical Trumpian discourse analysis
Ian Prasad Philbrick and Ashley Wu, "The 9 Elements of a Trump Rally", NYT 10/8/2024:
The energy for Mr. Trump’s third White House campaign comes from his rallies. Since President Biden dropped out of the race and Vice President Kamala Harris took the helm, Mr. Trump has held nearly 20 of them, speaking for about 90 minutes at each.
Like most politicians, he repeats things at every speech. Unlike most politicians, he offers a grim view of the country, makes up nicknames for his opponents and pledges to use the power of the government to punish his rivals.
To help readers experience what a Trump rally is like, we used video to break down the nine themes he consistently returns to.
Those nine "themes" are:
1. Savior and protector
2. Insults
3. Deceits
4. The hits
5. Political violence
6. The Trump agenda
7. Digressions
8. Anti-democratic statements
9. Stumbles
Read the article for the details, as well as clever tableaux of video clips and a cool carpet plot of the theme-weave in his 9/29 Erie PA rally:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/TrumpRallyCarpetPlot.png
I like the general idea, Ashley Wu's graphics are impressive, and it's tempting to use modern topic and sentiment analysis techniques to derive similar things automatically.
But I wonder how good the inter-annotator agreement for the human version of this analysis would be?
One obvious problem is that the "themes" are potentially overlapping — Trump's digressions are often also insults or deceits or threats of violence, etc.; his stumbles can occur in any of the other segments; some of his greatest "hits" are also insults, deceits, or savior/protector assertions; and so on. Furthermore, some of the themes are matters of content or tone (e.g. insults), while others are a question of discourse structure (e.g. digressions) or overall topic statistics (e.g. hits).
Those overlaps and ambiguities will make it easier for an automatic analysis to produce plausible results, but they'll also make the overall results less informative. And while I agree that Donald Trump's rhetorical style is in some ways special, it would be better to demonstrate that with an analysis that positions him in the same space as other speakers.
The cited 9 "themes" can certainly be applied to speeches from other politicians (or other people in general) — but when we start analyzing others, we're going to want additional "themes", and the whole system will need to do a better job of engaging the general problem of discourse analysis.
Still, the article makes sense, and the graphics are great.
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