Spelling: The Agony, the Ecstasy and the History
A few weeks ago, after some violent rioting at a demonstration in my hometown of Toronto, the following shocking news appeared in the...
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debcourt
- Aug 3
- 4 min
The Language of Names
When in 1962 a young Jewish folk singer from Hibbing, Minnesota, changed his name from Robert Allen Zimmerman to Bob Dylan, the new name...
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debcourt
- Jun 19
- 4 min
Man Walks into a Bar
Have you ever noticed that any version of this joke (which could include men of various ethnic groups, a rabbi and a priest, a turtle, a...
39 views0 comments
debcourt
- May 9
- 4 min
The Ministry of Silly Words
This reference will be lost on those who were not Monty Python fans. For these tragically deprived readers: Monty Python did a sketch...
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debcourt
- Mar 30
- 4 min
Memes and Culture
Last night my husband and I were watching television, a news program that was reporting how some memes, those cute or annoying (depending...
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debcourt
- Jan 18
- 4 min
Our Living Language (BBC 3)
[Gentle classical music fades in and then gradually out] Alasdair: Hello and good evening. Welcome to one of BBC 3's longest running...
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debcourt
- Dec 4, 2022
- 4 min
Fun With Angst
I have missed you, dear readers! Consumed recently by dry academic writing and a period of personal angst, the details of which are...
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debcourt
- Oct 13, 2022
- 4 min
Literature, the human condition and the time machine
I am a fiction junky, reading one or sometimes two novels a week. They have to be good novels, not plot-driven adventures with cardboard...
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debcourt
- Sep 7, 2022
- 4 min
The Saurus
Following up on a comment by an enthusiastic and faithful blog reader (you know who you are, Shimshon) about this blog's recent posting...
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debcourt
- Aug 1, 2022
- 4 min
Dictionaries – Bo-o-o-ring?
Boring: adjective (circa 1841): causing boredom; tiresome; lacking interest. Noun: boredom. The exact origin is unclear, but it may have...
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debcourt
- Jul 6, 2022
- 3 min
If Shakespeare Were Woke
The noun wokeness now appears in the Cambridge Dictionary, where it is defined as "a state of being aware, especially of social problems...
119 views1 comment
debcourt
- Jun 10, 2022
- 4 min
Punctuation, Past and Present
Today we will look at – be still, my beating heart – the history of punctuation. Yes, punctuation has a history, and yes, it is more...
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debcourt
- May 13, 2022
- 4 min
Confessions of a solitary Scrabbler
Confession: I sometimes play Scrabble with myself. Okay, quite often. There, I said it. When she and I (our preferred pronouns) play, our...
36 views4 comments
debcourt
- Apr 4, 2022
- 4 min
Diminounation: You may now forget this word.
Readers under the age of fifty may want to skip this blog post. You may not (yet) be suffering from diminounation, a word I just invented...
86 views2 comments
debcourt
- Feb 20, 2022
- 4 min
Humpty, Shakespeare and the River
Some nursery rhymes stick with us from generation to generation and from century to century. The ones that stick usually have simple,...
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debcourt
- Jan 23, 2022
- 4 min
What words mean
Among my readers and subscribers (who, I blush to tell you, now number in the double digits, and the first digit is no longer one!) are...
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debcourt
- Jan 3, 2022
- 4 min
Cheap Tricks to Achieve Modest Immortality
No, not the spiritual kind. We are in favor of that mode of immortality, but since we cannot really know anything about it, it isn't blog...
28 views1 comment
debcourt
- Dec 15, 2021
- 4 min
Language, Culture and the Pronoun Revolution
We have talked in this blog about how language changes, how new words are introduced from the surrounding culture, and how language and...
69 views1 comment
debcourt
- Nov 16, 2021
- 4 min
Confessions of a cisgender logophile
I am amazed and thrilled that there are still so many new words to learn. Some of them actually are new words – recently coined to name a...
31 views2 comments
debcourt
- Oct 19, 2021
- 4 min
Famous last (and first) words
Before we get down to business in this blog post, where does the phrase "famous last words" come from, anyway? Nobody knows who actually...
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