I used the word surplus when I was writing the other day, and as soon as I saw it on my screen I thought, How have I never noticed that before? Continue reading
Surplus to Requirements
language evolution
You’ve Got Mail
Another little detail I noticed on the poster that inspired yesterday’s post: FOR BOOKING MAIL…
Nothing really remarkable there, but I was curious about the use of to mail as a verb. Again, that’s not really revolutionary, but I did notice the lack of an E. Just mail, not email. Continue reading
Animator Wanted
I saw the above poster today and naturally my eye was drawn to that word: animations.
It needs to be said that this poster probably wasn’t written by a native English speaker, and by animations they probably didn’t mean cartoons, which is what most English speakers would take it to mean. So with that in mind: what do you think animations means here?
Inhibition
OK, so as per yesterday, inhibition isn’t really the opposite of exhibition. Of course there’s still a basic relationship of contrast between the two. Continue reading
To Have and to Hold
At the cinema last night, the standard message about the film’s age rating came up, stating that the film was rated suitable for exhibition etc. Fine. At that point though, the couple behind me began to discuss the word exhibition, and its pronunciation. Continue reading
Blackmail
Imagine, completely hypothetically, that the President of Russia had information he could use to blackmail the President of the United States. Crazy, I know, but reading about this possibility recently made me think about the word blackmail. Continue reading
Jellyfish
Not the most complicated of creatures, jellyfish. And not the most complicated of words either.
Jelly + fish = jellyfish. Easy. I heard the word during a song this evening, and was struck by its simplicity. But of course I had the feeling that there’d be something interesting, linguistically, about jellyfish.
And so I found myself on the Wikipedia entry for jellyfish. And that was just the beginning… Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 