writing

Begging the Question

Niall O'Donnell 21 Comments

Writing about the etymology of the word clock yesterday reminded me of when I wrote about the word to decimate recently, and how people are fond of citing its original meaning as being to reduce by 10%, even though that’s not true.

As I said before, I can understand people having this misconception, and I can understand the instinct to correct people. There have always been people who’ve acted this way about language, but recently I’ve noticed more and more people taking such a prescriptive approach to English.

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A Dark Horse

Niall O'Donnell 10 Comments

He’s a dark horse, isn’t he?

How would you describe the expression a dark horse to somebody who’d never heard it before? After thinking for a moment, you might say it’s a person of hidden depths or secret talents/opinions, someone who achieves something when no-one expected that they might. You might give an example of a quiet student in a language class who suddenly speaks confidently and fluently in an oral exam.

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Social Media Links

Niall O'Donnell 2 Comments

If you’re happy to just read my posts on this website, then please feel free to ignore this. That’s probably what I’d do. I’ve created pages for my blog on social media for two main reasons: to stop friends being bombarded with blog stuff on my personal profiles, and because apparently you’re supposed to do this to get more people to visit and so on. As you can perhaps tell, I find it hard to put much effort into this, though I’m still needy and insecure enough to want as many readers as possible.

If you’re a heavy social-media user, you might want to connect with this blog via such media, and you can do so via these links (which can also be found on the About page and via the little widgets on the website itself): Continue reading →

Is Donald Trump the Humblest or the Most Humble Person in the World?

Niall O'Donnell 23 Comments

There may be one advantage to Donald Trump being President of the United States (only one!), though it’s quite a selfish one: he certainly gives me a lot of food for thought. Sometimes I really don’t want to write about him, or even think about him, or exist in the same universe as him, but he can be hard to ignore, particularly when he demonstrates his unusually dysfunctional relationship with the English language.

Last week he gave us another addition to the evergrowing list of did-he-actually-just-say-that? moments:

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Foreign Words in English: Are we Getting them Wrong? (Not Really, No)

Niall O'Donnell 8 Comments

I think it’s only fair, after looking at the way the French language uses pseudo-anglicisms (a lovely term I came across earlier), it’s only fair that I take a corresponding look at foreign words we use in English, and how their use is different from in their original language. Unsurprisingly, we use a lot of foreign terms, and with most English speakers being monolingual, we don’t always use them as they were originally intended.

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Like Tears in Rain

Niall O'Donnell 12 Comments

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

-Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), Blade Runner (1982)

I should state right away that this post has nothing to do with Blade Runner, either of the 2019 or 2049 variety (though I did rewatch the former last weekend in preparation for watching the latter, probably this afternoon). Continue reading →

Who is The Last Jedi? Or is it, “Who are…”

Niall O'Donnell 16 Comments

You might have noticed that December will see the release of the latest Star Wars film, The Last Jedi. When the title was first announced, people immediately picked up on an ambiguity: is Jedi singular or plural?

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