Incent, Incentivize: Authority Always Wins
In the course of a recent dinner conversation I cocked my ear (and my eyebrow) at the sound of a verb I had not heard before: “to incent.” “Incentivize” I know well of course, having heard it many...
View Article“Man” Gender
Comments on today’s LL post have centred on gender neutral “dude” in certain contexts, prompted by this cartoon: A couple commentators report completely gender neutral “dude” in all contexts. Querying...
View ArticleThree OED Poems
Recent posts on found poetry reminded me of several OED entries I bookmarked out over the years because they gave me more than the usual pleasures of etymology, definition, and commonplace-book-like...
View ArticlePoetry and the Dictionary Conference – Oxford 2013
The CFP for this summer’s conference in Oxford has been posted. I expect to be there discussing some aspect of the OED and poetry. This symposium will be held at St Peter’s College, Oxford, on 15 June,...
View ArticleShitepoke
From Choate’s American Bird Names: Shite poke. An attempt to render more delicate by a change in spelling a name for the bird derived from its habit of ejecting effluent when making a startled...
View ArticleOil has poise(s)
One for the science and metaphor files? From “The Thermodynamics of Glass“: A liquid has viscosity, a measure of its resistance to flow. The viscosity of water at room temperature is about 0.01...
View ArticleBroken Hierarchies
Oxford University Press has announced this coming November as the publication date for Geoffrey Hill’s collected poetical writings, Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952-2012. [Update 25.3.13: Cover Image]...
View ArticleSorts of Hierarchies
I was intrigued when I read that Geoffrey Hill’s forthcoming collected poetical works would be called Broken Hierarchies: Poems 1952-2012 (OUP: 2013). I recognized it as the title of a poem in Without...
View ArticleSerendipity & Contingency
In the latest lecture to be posted online [http://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/engfac/poetry/2013-03-21-engfac-poetry-hill-2.mp3], the Oxford Professor of Poetry tells us: Because I don’t go online in any...
View ArticleAmbivalent Toponyms
Today Facebook suggested I play a game called Cityville, where you can “build the city of your dreams.” Presumably you have to come up with a better name for the city of your dreams than “Cityville.”...
View ArticlePejorative Eponyms –“Quétaine”
As often happens, today I was looking at something on the internet when my running internal commentary snarked, quétaine! People from Quebec grow up knowing this very useful word, which describes a...
View ArticleRobert Greene’s Vision
Written at the instant of his death Containing a penitent passion for the folly of his pen Sero sed serio To the gentlemen readers, health. Gentlemen, in a vision before my death I foresee...
View ArticleFrom William Camden’s Proverbs
A Cat may look upon a king. A dog hath a day. Agree, for the Law is costly. A friend in Court is worth a penny in purse. A good jack maketh a good Gill. All is well that ends well. A little pot is soon...
View ArticlePoetic Antagonyms
The verb “cleave” has two contradictory senses in English: it means both “to separate” and “to join together” (and so figures its own self-separated, self-joined meanings). Out this week is a journal...
View ArticleQuotation Economy in the OED
Almost all of OED2′s 2.36M evidence quotations are used only once. Less than 1% are reused: 14,916 occur twice, 553 three times, 29 four, 3 five, and two six times. These most recycled [5x +]...
View ArticleSmithers, Redress the Hounds!
This post is about evidence loops in the OED. But let me begin at the end: In one of his Oxford lectures collected in The End of the Poem, Paul Muldoon refers back to his predecessor’s famous...
View Article“OED’s Poetic Acquaintances”– Slides
Here are my slides from the very good Poetry and the Dictionary symposium last weekend at St Peter’s College, Oxford. Slides: “OED’s Poetic Acquaintances” For anyone not at the conference, the slides...
View ArticleEmily Dickinson was a Dinosaur
In a graduate student’s paper this morning I came across a description of Emily Dickinson’s handwriting by T. W. Higginson, who in 1891 remembered receiving a letter, almost thirty years earlier,...
View ArticleChains of OED Evidence
Derek Attridge writes, in a comment to my post on OED quotation loops ["Smithers, Redress the Hounds!" 5.6.13]: W. H. Auden boasted to me that he had got a word — “plain-sewing” in the sense of “mutual...
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