Language Log

Today's Frazz:

Today's Tank McNamara:

According to the NFL, a "hip drop tackle" "occurs when a defender wraps up a ball carrier and rotates or swivels his hips, unweighting himself and dropping onto ball carrier’s legs during the tackle". And I would have more or less guessed that meaning, before getting the authoritative definition.

A Sandwich Helix, on the other hand…

For the past week or so, Jef Mallett's Frazz has been exploring etymology and semantic drift.

The current sequence starts on 10/10 (or maybe earlier):

The middle two panels of a recent SMBC:

This might be an (unfair) attack on Blinkist, but it isn't.

Jonathan Weisman, "As Trump Arrives, Aurora Insists It’s Not the ‘War Zone’ He Sees", NYT 10/11/2024.

And today's xkcd:

The current xkcd comic:

The current Dinosaur Comics:

The first two panels of today's SMBC:

Today's Dinosaur Comics:

Mouseover title: “this has TREMENDOUS implications for my two original characters, Anna Phora and E. P. Strophe”

Today's SMBC:

Today's xkcd — "The Three Kinds of Scientific Research":

Mouseover title: "The secret fourth kind is 'we applied a standard theory to their map of every tree and got some suspicious results.'"

[This is a guest post by Frank Clements]

I saw something about Japanese dialects recently that might interest you. The makers of the Marvel movies are trying to recover the enthusiasm that's been lost due to their more recent films being critically panned and scandals with major actors, so they're introducing the classic Marvel villain Dr. Doom, who is traditionally the main villain of the Fantastic Four (created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee). They've brought back Robert Downey Jr. to play him, even though he's already played Iron Man, and they haven't explained how that is going to work.

Today's SMBC: