Today, Green's Dictionary of Slang (GDoS for short) launches its online version. This is excellent news, coming more than five years after Jonathon Green published the print edition of his exhaustive three-volume reference work. As I wrote in the New York Times Book Review at the time, It's a never-ending challenge to keep up with […]
An interesting example of meaningful uh: As an athlete, I've been in locker rooms my entire adult life and uh, that's not locker room talk. — Sean Doolittle (@whatwouldDOOdo) October 10, 2016 The effect seems different from um, in a subtle way.
A video titled "The Chinese tourists accused of bad behaviour in Thailand | Channel 4 News" was posted to YouTube on 2/22/15, but it has been recirculated in this article by Didi Kirsten Tatlow about Chinese travel abroad during the recent National Day holiday: "With Its Tourists Behaving Badly, China Embarks on Some Soul-Searching" (NYT, […]
Mollymooly's comment on yesterday's post ("The Donald's THE, again") deserves general attention: 1. A leopard is bigger than a cheetah, though both have spots. 2. The leopard is bigger than the cheetah, though both have spots. 3. Leopards are bigger than cheetahs, though both have spots. 4. The leopards are bigger than the cheetahs, though […]
THE African Americans. THE Latinos. THE women. Objects. You use "the" in front of objects, not people. #debate — Diana Prichard (@diana_prichard) October 10, 2016 It's not really true that "you use 'the' in front of objects, not people" — today's NYT is full of phrases like "until now the Russians have been on board […]
Thanks to Chinese characters, we are inundated with such preposterous profundities. In the day before yesterday's UK Observer, there is an article by Claire Armitstead titled "Madeleine Thien: ‘In China, you learn a lot from what people don’t tell you’: The Man Booker-shortlisted writer on a solitary childhood in Canada and daring to question the […]
Oliver Darcy, "REBELLION: RNC staffers 'defying orders' to keep working for Trump, source says", Business Insider 10/8/2016. So how are those staffers defying orders? Are they ceasing to work for Trump despite orders to continue? In that case, it's "orders to keep working for Trump" that they're defying. Or are they defying instructions (to stop), (in order) […]
Judging from these recent Language Log posts and the comments thereto, it is not always easy for native speakers of English to understand what Donald Trump says, especially when he is making lewd remarks: "A non-apology for the ages" (10/7/16) "'Like a bitch'?" (10/8/16) "Trump translated" (9/31/16) "Trump's aphasia" (9/5/15) There have been many other […]
"Paul Ryan Refers to Furor Over Trump as Elephant in the Room", Bloomberg News 10/8/2016: Speaker of the House Paul Ryan spoke at the GOP “Fall Fest” unity event in his home district in Wisconsin. While he did not directly address Donald Trump’s crude and sexually aggressive remarks about women in a 2005 recording, he […]
The reaction to the video of Donald Trump's 2005 discussion with Billy Bush has focused primarily on its rape-culture aspects, including passages like this one: Your browser does not support the audio element. Trump: I got to use some tictacs just in case I start kissing her _______you know I'm automatically attracted to beautiful- _______I […]
David Fahrenthold, "Trump recorded having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005", The Washington Post 10/7/2016: Donald Trump bragged in vulgar terms about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women during a 2005 conversation caught on a hot microphone, saying that “when you’re a star, they let you do it,” according to a […]
"Trump Tells Nevadans How to Pronounce 'Nevada' … Incorrectly", ABCNews 10/5/2016: Donald Trump raised some eyebrows in the Silver State Wednesday night when he told Nevadans how to pronounce their state's name — differently than they do. "Heroin overdoses are surging and meth overdoses in Nevada, Nuh-VAH-da," he told the crowd in Reno. "And […]