Why does "beefy" mean "muscular", but "porky" means "fat"?

Woke up nearly over (by the time I posted this) 4 hours ago and still haven't managed to fall back asleep, argh ( Read more... )

Would anyone be terribly annoyed if I went on for a bit about some language pet peeves of mine? I've pent them up for months (some even for years) and they're about to drive me nuts. Might be a side effect of the pandemia ( Read more... )

The accent of the hobbit who sits next to Sam in the pub drew my attention: apparently there's an English accent (Can anyone tell me what it's called?) that sounds like northern German (that of the North-Sea area). Kinda makes sense, since that's where the Anglo-Saxons came from - it's just surprising that these similarities still exist.

As fond as I am of CNN, it always provides me with things to be linguistically pet-peeved about ( Read more... )

To me loyalty used to be only a good thing, I didn't consider that something could be bad about it. But then Trump won the election and started picking people for his cabinet just because they had stuck with him. So now that I connect it with cronyism, loyalty has turned into a dirty word ( Read more... )

I keep hearing people use "female" as a noun applied to humans. It annoys me so very much, argh!

Last Friday was the Long Night of Sciences (this is the literal translation of the name). What it's about:
On Researchers' Night, Dresden's universities, science institutions, and science-linked companies will open their doors, their labs, auditoriums, and archives for the general public. Visitors can experience technology, science and innovation, ( Read more... )

Sometimes I'm so easily peeved about phrases and other language stuff. I have CNN on a lot and there are phrases that get terribly overused. Older examples are "kicking the can down the road" and "boots on the ground" (What's your problem with "ground troops ( Read more... )

I only just noticed that my X-Files DVD menus show the episode titles (and rest of the menus) in German on the DVD player and in English on the computer.