It's like Norwegian Actor's Theater but real and from the Netherlands
This (via @ednl) is like a dream come true. I should learn to speak Dutch so I can really appreciate it.
Cosmo Catalano
This is childish nonsense. Healthy dose of salt req'd. Click for Serious Cosmo.
![Venn Diagram outlining the British Isles. Critically important for Americans who do not want to be accused of finding Sarah Palin “refreshing”.
Potential future project: Venn Diagram of adjectives/demonyms (English vs. British) and sound-alikes (Briton vs. Britain vs. Breton)
[via Unlikely Words]](http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kuz5f8SMJ11qznfx5o1_250.gif)
Venn Diagram outlining the British Isles. Critically important for Americans who do not want to be accused of finding Sarah Palin “refreshing”.
Potential future project: Venn Diagram of adjectives/demonyms (English vs. British) and sound-alikes (Briton vs. Britain vs. Breton)
[via Unlikely Words]
Breaking wheel
This horrific method of torture/execution seems to be mostly forgotten. I’d never heard of it, anyway. The reason I now know about it is that it has etymological echoes: I read about it in an explanation of the origin of the Norwegian word radbrekke, which comes from German and is found in Modern German radebrechen. (“Rad” means “wheel” and “brechen” means “break”.) In German, one may radbrechen a language, e.g., “Englisch radebrechen” (speak broken English). In Norwegian, one may radbrekke not only a language but also, say, an author, by performing, translating or interpreting them so badly that their original work is distorted almost beyond recognition. Wikipedia mentions several other phrases and words that originally referred to the breaking wheel.
I think it’s fascinating when something is almost completely forgotten, yet has left traces in words that, if you know what to look for, are almost transparent. (If you know rad and brechen you can pretty much figure out what the breaking wheel was about.)
It’s pretty famous as far as torture implements go—the band Catherine Wheel was named after it, and it’s frequently featured in iconography of St. Catherine, and heraldry of places, occupations, and families of which she is patron saint.
Reblog of Daily Meh
Is there REALLY a porn film called "OMG, Stop Tickling Me"? Also, was I right to put that question mark outside the quotes?
(via alexbalk)
Yup—on both counts.
Reblog of Alex Balk
PUT THE COMMA INSIDE THE QUOTATION MARK.
THE PERIOD TOO. PUT IT IN. PUT IT IN RIGHT NOW.
THANK YOU. I will go a-killing someday over this.
You’re wrong.
How do you propose to differentiate between terminal punctuation attributable to the quoted source and terminal punctuation attributable to the author if everything is wedged, by rule, inside the very marks that indicate the beginning and end of quoted content?
It’s nothing personal. Your system is just inferior.
Reblog of Choire Sicha
“
The truth was that Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God—a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that—and he must be about His Father’s business, the service of a vast, vulgar, and meretricious beauty. So he invented just the sort of Jay Gatsby that a seventeen-year-old boy would be likely to invent, and to this conception he was faithful to the end.
Like I said ass shot
The NFL would prefer that you use the term “wardrobe malfunction” instead of “ass shot”.
Reblog of megs the masshole.
![ragbag:
the adventures of papa and bill
[…]
additional data: the average word length in these three hemingway novels is 3.85 letters; faulkner’s average word length is 3.88 letters, which is statistically the same. 1.08% of hemingway’s words were 10 letters or more whereas 1.56% of faulkner’s were.
conclusion: hype. the top two 20th century american novelists were engaging in a literary pillow fight so they could ride the gravy train of book sales for as long as the public would allow.
Rebuttals:
“Cinderstrewnpacked” and “Philoprogenitive” are indeed words likely to send readers to a dictionary. “Misunderstandings”, “Inconsequentially”, and “Conscientiously” are not.
The battle was over word choice, not length. Hemingway, as is his style, used a very simple word (“big”) to convey a great number of simultaneous meanings.
At any rate, the origin of their “pillow fight” was their nearly diametrically opposed approaches to crafting fiction. Average words per sentence would be a far more illustrative statistic in this regard.
Accepted English spellings are so arbitrary and haphazard that characters per word is an entirely useless metric in nearly all settings.
Point of Order: The Old Man and the Sea isn’t really a novel. This is an academic point, I readily concede, but IMHO, novels have internal divisions.
Point of Order 2: The Old Man and the Sea is also written by Hemingway. As I Lay Dying is by Faulkner. Someone should correct this.](http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kt9f66PKbc1qzrip0o1_400.png)
the adventures of papa and bill
[…]
additional data: the average word length in these three hemingway novels is 3.85 letters; faulkner’s average word length is 3.88 letters, which is statistically the same. 1.08% of hemingway’s words were 10 letters or more whereas 1.56% of faulkner’s were.
conclusion: hype. the top two 20th century american novelists were engaging in a literary pillow fight so they could ride the gravy train of book sales for as long as the public would allow.
Rebuttals:
- “Cinderstrewnpacked” and “Philoprogenitive” are indeed words likely to send readers to a dictionary. “Misunderstandings”, “Inconsequentially”, and “Conscientiously” are not.
- The battle was over word choice, not length. Hemingway, as is his style, used a very simple word (“big”) to convey a great number of simultaneous meanings.
- At any rate, the origin of their “pillow fight” was their nearly diametrically opposed approaches to crafting fiction. Average words per sentence would be a far more illustrative statistic in this regard.
- Accepted English spellings are so arbitrary and haphazard that characters per word is an entirely useless metric in nearly all settings.
- Point of Order: The Old Man and the Sea isn’t really a novel. This is an academic point, I readily concede, but IMHO, novels have internal divisions.
- Point of Order 2: The Old Man and the Sea is also written by Hemingway. As I Lay Dying is by Faulkner. Someone should correct this.
Reblog of the ragbag
An Abominable Etymology
Was listening to “My Word!” on the Beeb a few moments ago. I suppose I shouldn’t be upset because the show has been in reruns since 1990, but the host just insisted on the correctness of a very innaccurate etymology:
The root of “abominable” is frequently taken as a combination of the Latin “ab” (“away from”) and “homo” (“man”—more accurately “person” or “human”.) Many Early Modern English writers, Shakespeare included, even spelled it “abhominable”, futher suggesting the relationship.
But if Shakespeare had studied his Latin a touch more carefully, he’d have come across the Latin word “abominabilis”, the adjectival form of “abominari”, “to detest”. The “h” appears to have been erroneously inserted into many Middle English texts, including Wyclif’s Bible. Luke 16:15 contains the word “abhomynacioun”—the Latin Vulgate from which it was translated reads “abominatio”.
The Latin meaning actually stems from “ab” and “omen” (meaning, unsurprisingly, “omen”). The Romans recoiled from “abominable” things not because they were so distant from humanity, but because humanity had judged them as ill-omened—something which many modern people would consider an abomination in itself.
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Hi, I'm Cosmo. That's my real name. I'm good at lots of stuff. I make of awesome things in my spare time. I'm on twitter. I live in Boston Proper. I ride my bike.
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