The Federal Bureau of Semantics and Overtones

September 18, 2009 @ 2:57 pm · Filed by under Linguistics in the comics

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Yesterday's 9 Chickweed Lane:



And today's strip:

Read the whole sequence (to date): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

I especially like this exchange:

Juliette: Your only actual qualification is one of manifest insanity.
Thorax: "Broad experience" would be the term then.

September 18, 2009 @ 2:57 pm · Filed by under Linguistics in the comics


7 Comments

  1. Benjamin Zimmer said,

    September 18, 2009 @ 3:12 pm

    For more on the semantics and overtones of czar (the governmental kind), see my piece in Slate and followup on Word Routes. And for the czar/tsar distinction, see Languagehat.

  2. John Cowan said,

    September 18, 2009 @ 4:52 pm

    Is it just me, or is "the Cossacks, Siberia, and the knout" strikingly reminiscent of "rum, sodomy, and the lash"?

  3. Aaron Davies said,

    September 20, 2009 @ 2:06 pm

    where does "the Cossacks, Siberia, and the knout" come from?

  4. Aaron Davies said,

    September 20, 2009 @ 2:08 pm

    every man and woman is a tsar

  5. Ken Brown said,

    September 21, 2009 @ 10:11 am

    If I can believe Google, "Tsar" is the preferred spelling on UK websites by about 2 to 1, but "Czar" is more common on US sites (with "tzar" coming in a respectable third in both)

    Which fits with my vague preference for "Tsar" over "Czar". I don't read or speak Russian so have no idea what the accurate transliteration ought to be, but "Czar" feels dated and Victorian.

    If someone had asked me to write the phrase "Drugs Tsar" before I read this thread I think I would have written "Drugs Tsar" , not realising that Americans spell it a different way.

  6. Boris said,

    September 21, 2009 @ 6:23 pm

    I'm from Russia and live in the US. I don't know what spelling I would use when talking about actual Tsars as in the monarchs, but I would definitely spell it czar when talking about the US political usage, considering they pronounce it "zar" and not "tsar"

  7. Mabon said,

    September 22, 2009 @ 11:06 pm

    re: Ken Brown:
    I don't read or speak Russian so have no idea what the accurate transliteration ought to be, but "Czar" feels dated and Victorian.

    Accurate transliteration of царь would give you "Tsar", I believe.

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