Inspired by Mark Liberman's post, "Putting the X in AXB," I spent some time trying to find the origin for this venerable snowclone. A quick check of newspaper databases uncovered "putting the fun in fundamentals" from November 1912, and it turns out that the fall of 1912 was when the snowclone snowballed. It's a nice example of how, even a century ago, lingua-memes could "go viral" (and go stale).
Read the rest of this entry »
Josh Fruhlinger was morpho-syntactically unhappy about Shoe for 9/21/2011 ("Josh puts the 'long' in 'long-winded'", The Comics Curmudgeon 9/21/2011):
Read the rest of this entry »
If you're not following Geoff Pullum's Lingua Franca contributions at the Chronicle of Higher Education, you should. His most recent column: "Mistakes Are Made (but Using the Passive Isn’t One of Them)", 10/1/2011.
Permalink Comments off
According to John Burns, "Reporter Threatens to Name Names in Phone Hacking Scandal", NYT 9/30/2011:
A reporter who is among the 16 people arrested and then freed on bail in the phone hacking case that has shaken Rupert Murdoch’s media empire in Britain warned his former bosses on Friday that he planned to break his silence on the scandal in a civil court case. He said that he would reveal those who were responsible for the phone hacking.
The reporter, Neville Thurlbeck, 49, who was the chief reporter for the now-defunct tabloid The News of the World, gave the warning in a statement issued through his lawyers in connection with his wrongful-dismissal lawsuit against News International, the British newspaper arm of Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation. […]
“There is so much I could have said publicly to the detriment of News International but so far have chosen not to,” he said. “At the length, truth will out.”
Read the rest of this entry »
Well, one data-point at least. Back on Sept. 6, Susan Andersen posted this on Facebook:
Read the rest of this entry »
