Language Log

In today's Get Fuzzy, Bucky's exploration of English compound-noun semantics continues:

We last saw a Zippy with this trope in it ("we have no concept of war or private property") back in January. Here it comes again:

(For an inventory of other Language Log postings on "no word for X" and related figures, look here.)

Bizarro takes on a species of semantic error:

From my 1980 booklet Mistakes (p. 14):

Corresponding to the semantic errors above are PRIVATE MEANINGS … I have one friend who thought for a long time that Indo- meant 'southern, lower' (from its occurrence in Indochina) and another who believed that ritzy meant 'in poor taste' (as a result of her parents' deprecating tone in using the word).

My two examples illustrate two routes to private meanings: a misapprehension about the meanings contributed by parts of a word (Indochina); and a misapprehension of a word's meaning based on its use in context (ritzy). Just yesterday I posted on my blog about another instance of the first sort: spendthrift used, in a Cathy cartoon, for 'penurious person', no doubt because of a connection of the element thrift to the adjective thrifty.

Today's Get Fuzzy:

For St. Patrick's Day, Dinosaur Comics muses on Middle English (among other things):

(Hat tip to Bruce Webster.)

From Dinosaur Comics, DIRECTION IS A BUCKET THAT PEOPLE KEEP SNEAKING INTO (with no apologies to George Lakoff):

(Hat tip to Bruce Webster.)

Today's F-minus:

[Hat tip: Josh Rosenberg]

Saturday's Cathy:

David Craig sent in a link to yesterday's Blondie, a strip that I don't normally read. He may have uncovered the secret identity of Geoff Pullum's correspondent — but in any case, the last panel has a nice instance of overnegation, of a kind that I don't think we've discussed before:

Shovel-ready, Ben Zimmer's victorious nominee for "most likely to succeed" in the ADS WOTY competition, is clearly gaining ground:

There's a usage manual for comic book lettering: "Comics Grammar and Tradition", by Nate Piekos, on the Blambot: Comic Fonts and Lettering site. Note that Piekos talks about these bits of advice as, in part, a matter of grammar, using "grammar" to refer to any system of conventions regulating form. In the introduction to the manual, Piekos describes it as a mixture of "established tradition" (as he perceives it; it's unlikely that he did any actual research) and personal aesthetic preferences — not unlike usage manuals for English and other languages:

Today's Grand Avenue:

The most recent xkcd:

This is such a good joke, and in retrospect such an obvious one, that it's hard to believe that Randall Munroe was the first one to tell it — but I can't find any precedents. Of course, "significant other" has only been in common use since the 1970s.