I heard someone use this expression the other day, and of course the first thing I thought was: Who’s Larry? Continue reading
As Happy as Larry
word origins
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
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
Shop or Store?
This is another of those classic American/British English differences. Shop is British English, and store is American English. Pretty well known, and nothing too confusing. They both come from slightly different origins, but came fairly logically to mean the same thing. Continue reading
Housewarming
Have you ever been to a housewarming party? Continue reading
Ignoble
You might have heard of the Ig Nobel Prize: an annual award for trivial or unusual scientific research. The name of course is a play on both the Nobel Prize and the word ignoble. I read something about the Ig Nobel Prize today, and then thought about the word ignoble, specifically:
Ignoble? That’s weird, isn’t it? Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 