WriMo Ireland » words

Words that don’t rhyme…

laryskun — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 22:20:34 +0000

With all the articles about the English language that have been in the last days, I felt I had to post you this link to a Yahoo! Answers discussion thread about English words that no other word rhyme with.

Even though I don’t write much poetry (in french like in english), it’s good to know.

Word of the year…

farfalla — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 18:59:58 +0000

Following up on my post about misused, overused and useless words the other day, I spotted an article on the BBC just now about the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year list (for 2007, obviously) – they chart words and phrases that become dominant in a particular year.

The word for 2007 is subprime, as related to below-par mortgages (and all the trouble in the US economy at the moment over mortgages). I’m not sure if it would be a word used much here though?

Words/phrases from the Word of the Year list that I particularly liked were:
- wrap rage (anger induced by the inability to open supermarket packaging - something my partner suffers from)
- Googleganger (someone other than you who’s listed when you Google your own name)

Ironically, waterboarding (a nasty form of ‘interrogation’, i.e. torture) made it onto both the misused etc list and onto the Word of the Year list. Guess it’s been something we’ve heard a lot about in the news, hmm?

Misused, overused and useless words

farfalla — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 18:54:52 +0000

Every year, Lake Superior State University produces a List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness - well, words that they believe should be banished anyway.

Their list of 2008 includes wordsmith and the verb to author as ones pertinent to what we do, but also includes overused phrases that crop up a lot in sports commentary (particularly in the US) and words such as random and sweet which are used out of their traditional context.

Anyone got any to add? I’ll admit the one on their list that I’d most like to see banished is webinar – a seminar conducted over the web. It’s ugly. Although maybe it should be reduced to binar in the same way that web log became blog?