Language Log

Today's Cul de Sac:

David Craig points out an interesting usage in today's Frazz: "They're for just because."

I discussed the process of turning phrases into modifiers in "Phrasally grateful", 10/18/2007:

If you run out of conventional adjectives and adverbs, the English language stands ready to help. Just package an evocative phrase or two with an appropriate prosodic inflection, and you're on your way […]

As the Frazz example illustrates, you can also use a similar process to make noun phrases, though I think it's much less common.

Today's Frazz:

Today's "Frazz" (via Ed Cormany on Twitter):

Zits for 3/19/2013:

I somehow missed this Bizarro comic when it first appeared:

Kevin & Kell for 2/16/2013:

Among the various misnegation explanations, "negative concord" seems to fit this one best.

Pearls Before Swine, as (re-)published in Metro 12 February 2013:

[h/t Eric Smith]

Today's SMBC:

On Daring Fireball, John Gruber noticed something interesting about David Pogue's New York Times review of the Surface Pro: what he calls "the use of bounding asterisks for emphasis around the coughs." Pogue wrote:

For decades, Microsoft has subsisted on the milk of its two cash cows: Windows and Office. The company’s occasional ventures into hardware generally haven’t ended well: (*cough*) Zune, Kin Phone, Spot Watch (*cough*).

And the asterisks weren't just in the online version of the Times article. Here it is in print (via Aaron Pressman):

In Dilbert for 1/30/2013, a rhetorical implied question:

Today's Frazz:

Coincidentally, two syndicated comic strips running today riff off of the old "Eskimo words for snow" canard. In Darby Conley's "Get Fuzzy," Satchel the dog discovers that "cats are like the Eskimos of laziness":

And in Jef Mallett's "Frazz," one of the "really really false" statements on Mr. Burke's quiz is "The Inuit have 100 words for snow and one of them is 'humptydiddy'":

(Hat tip, Nancy Friedman and Ed Cormany.)