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Word of the Day
LEGERDEMAIN (Noun, English) Skilled, dexterous use of the hands when performing magical tricks. Has also taken on a pejorative meaning of deceit or trickery. Note: Cited originally in English during the 16th century. From the French phrase 'léger de main' (light of hand).
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Category Archives: language change
Seman-tech Changes?
We know that languages change over time. Some of these changes are shifts in word usage and word senses. The world of technology changes rapidly, and it’s no surprise that word senses might reflect that. Three English nouns have caught … Continue reading
The Hidden Past of Words: English final -y
Consider the following list of everyday English words: memory, happy, baby, crazy, victory, city, silly, puppy, army For starters, they all end in -y and they can be grouped further as nouns (memory, baby, victory, city, puppy, army) or adjectives … Continue reading
Plural Logic
Forming the plural of a noun in English is pretty easy — mostly you add final -s to the singular form (with occasional spelling modifications: story -> stories). Linguists refer to nouns that form their plurals with final -s as … Continue reading
Posted in etymology, language change, Word Usage
Tagged garments, meaning change, plurals
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Teenage, Middle-age, New Age
English can form adjectives from the past participles of verbs. Consider: break:broken the vase was broken -> the broken vase fall:fallen his popularity has fallen recently -> his fallen popularity bake:baked the bread was baked in a brick oven -> … Continue reading
We’re All Verbs Now
Maybe, maybe not. Are there any English speakers today who don’t accept text as a verb? It was an easy move to permit text as a verb, follownig the paradigm of other communication channel noun-verb pairs in English — the … Continue reading
Posted in language change, Word Formation, Word Usage
Tagged acronyms, English verbs, language change, word formation
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Linguistic Asymmetries
Have you ever noticed that, while some words which take a prefix seem to form nice pairings with opposite meaning polarity (tie/untie, compliance/noncompliance, tasteful/distasteful), other pairs don’t work this way? For example, there is nonplussed, but not plussed, insipid, but … Continue reading
Posted in etymology, language change, Semantics, Word Formation, Word Usage
Tagged back-formation, language change, recombobulation area, semantic pairs
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Word Lust
Today’s Wall Street Journal reports on a database of language usage that is now available to researchers. It is derived from the digital library of the world’s books that Google has been assembling in recent years. Thus far, two billion … Continue reading
S Spotting
Somewhere you’ve probably read or heard the colloquial version of expect, as when cowpokes say ‘I ‘spect it’s goin’ to rain’. I’ve been hearing and reading (tweets on Twitter) other examples of this phonological reduction: I ate so much chocolate … Continue reading
Posted in language change, language variation, pronunciation
Tagged language change, phonological reduction, pronunciation
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The Social Network: Some Thoughts
I finally saw the new film, The Social Network, last night. It’s not a film predominately about language, but there are a few points to make about language in regard to the movie. First, I was deeply impressed, as were … Continue reading
Posted in Internet, language and social media, language change
Tagged film review, language change, the social network
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Word Travels 