If you need an under-two-minute stress reliever, watch Baby Goat vs. CatYesterday, a young friend of one of my kids asked what an antimacassar was. Her guess from context was an old-fashioned piece of furniture, which isn't far wrong. I explained about Macassar oil, worn regularly by men to get that shine in their hair, and how it greased up ( Read more... )

Happy Easter to all who celebrate! Today's riff is about kids and language, now just how they mangle it, but how they use it, including their landmines ( Read more... )

Do people--young people--still say 'beastly' as an adjective, and if so, who uses it?

And if they don't, what would, say, a well educated Oxonian say instead?

I love contemplating the evolution of terms, and what's implied behind. (If I can ( Read more... )

We all name and rename--if you just stop and consider how many names you have (being different things to different people, or being different people to different people)--you realize, yep, you too name.

So yesterday Making Light started with technical names for things. A subject I never thought about once I got out of school, where they used to ( Read more... )

Most people I've talked to over the years have family terms that derive out of two to four-year-old speech, either mangled words, or made-up words as the child struggles to express thoughts obviously going on inside their heads. An awful lot of this strays into the "Oh how cute" zone--wherein love fuels about 90% of the fun factor. "Our Little ( Read more... )

For speakers of the Queen's English, not Americanese.

Do you still say shan't where we'd say won't or has that become quaint?

Rebecca West once said about Jane Austen ( Read more... )

I was doing some heavy educational reading (a study on statistics of season of birth and achievement scores and diagnoses of learning disorders, etc, in a group of kids in Georgia ages 8-14) and came across the term "redshirted" for kids who are held back ( Read more... )