We call people "swine", "pigs", "dogs", "curs", "rats", even "water buffalo" when we want to disparage them. The latter epithet was uttered in the famous "water buffalo incident" that took place at the University of Pennsylvania in 1993, when an Israeli-born Jewish student, translating from Hebrew slang behema ("animal; beast" — used by Israelis to […]
Email yesterday from P.O.: Professor Liberman, we need you. You're no doubt aware of Trump's recent comment, quoting a supporter. But now TPM has gone and printed a reader email linking 'pussy' to pusillanimous'. I had never heard this before, and I'm fairly well-read. I did some google-sleuthing, and found that it has clearly been […]
Bruce Balden was curious as to why the Chinese terms for "fire department" (xiāofáng duì 消防队) and "firefighting" (xiāofáng 消防) do not have the word for "fire" (huǒ 火) in them. I had thought about that long ago, but never made an attempt to determine why it is so. Now that Bruce has brought up […]
Alissa Rubin, "Coping? Students in France just aren't", NYT 6/23/2015: There is no easy translation or even a firm concept of the word “coping” in French, so when it turned up last week in a question on the national exam to earn a high school degree, it set off a fracas among the 350,000 or […]
By chance, I came across this most revealing section of a perceptive book by Linda Jakobson entitled A Million Truths: A Decade in China (pp. 175-177), which shows how people from different parts of China often don't really understand each other. That includes people who are supposedly speaking different varieties of Mandarin. I know this […]
Reader Geoff Wade asks: Might you and your band of linguist lads and lassies turn your erudition to the term 'chop-chop', which according to Wikipedia derives from Cantonese. I can think of no Cantonese term which would give rise to this term. On this day of Thanksgiving (or Thanksgivvukah, if you prefer, which is said […]
Dave Itzkoff, "Putting Away His Toys", NYT 4/17/2013: The lesson he learned about Mr. Bay, he said, was that “behind the intensity and, oftentimes, the complications of getting” things (Mr. Johnson used a different word) “done in an efficient way is a very insightful guy.”
A food writer recently tried to find an effective euphemism for moist, in order to avoid the associated word-aversion problems (Hate Moist? You're Not Alone", Huffington Post 12/10/2012): At HuffPost Taste, the word moist comes up a lot in our work and, we have to admit, it nauseates us. It's an occupational hazard we can't seem […]
With the international attention given to the trial and conviction of members of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot on charges of "hooliganism," many have wondered online whether Pussy Riot is a translation of a Russian name. But no: the band consistently uses Pussy Riot (in Latin characters) on its official LiveJournal blog, even though […]
The marginally linguistic topic of freedom of linguistic expression occasionally occupies me here on Language Log, as you probably know. And you may be aware that my instincts tend toward the libertarian end of the spectrum, and the defense of the First Amendment. Possibly you are also aware that there really isn't anything I despise […]
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Michiko Kakutani, "A Master of Verse Spreads Bad Cheer", NYT 4/9/2012: Many American readers know Larkin chiefly from his more darkly funny lines: “Sexual intercourse began/In nineteen sixty-three/(Which was rather late for me) —/Between the end of the ‘Chatterley’ ban/And the Beatles’ first LP” (from “Annus Mirabilis”). Or: They mess you up, “your mum and […]
I just had a terrible idea that could probably make someone a modest fortune. I was inspired by Erin Gloria Ryan, "My Love Affair With 'Like'", Jezebel 6/26/2011: I use the word "like" with embarrassing frequency. I've started paying attention to how other people talk as well, and it's amazing how many women who I […]
I thought that Tucker Carlson was being lexically creative when he walked back his statement that Michael Vick should have been executed for his dogfighting sins: "This is what happens when you get too emotional," Carlson said […] "I'm a dog lover…I love them and I know a lot about what Michael Vick did … […]