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Gideon Sundbäck
Otto Fredrik Gideon Sundbäck was born April 24, 1880, on a farm in Sweden. His family was well off, and Sundbäck was able to continue his higher education in Germany. He graduated in 1903 with an engineering degree, and moved to the US in 1905. Sundbäck settled in Pennsylvania, in a medium-sized town, and pursued… Continue reading
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Shakespeare and Company
William Shakespeare was possibly born today, in 1564. As a writer born on April 23 in the 1500s, it’s understandable if there’s a lot of confusion about him. After all, another writer was born on April 23 in the 1500s — actually the year 1500. I’m talking about Johann Stumpf, of course, who wrote about… Continue reading
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Linguistic Flexibility?
It’s pretty common in English to use a word in a different way than its “part of speech” suggests. That is, using a verb as a noun, or a noun as a verb, etc. We can get away with this and still be understood because English sentences generally provide plenty of contextual clues so you… Continue reading
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Bells, dumb and bar
Possibly the most famous piece of exercise equipment ever is the dumbbell. It’s the iconic thing used in illustrations and cartoons; two heavy weights on the ends of a bar. Just a glimpse of it evokes weightlifting, exercise, gyms, and the like. Except…it’s nothing at all like a bell, so what’s with the name? The… Continue reading
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Liable to a jobation
English tends to have plenty of extra words and phrases for common things. There are loads of synonyms for “money”, for example, and money is certainly something commonplace. Something else you’re likely to encounter repeatedly — sometimes even in the course of a single day — is scolding. Or, if you prefer, rebuking, criticizing, giving… Continue reading
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A prologue to prolegomenon
“Prolegomenon” was borrowed straight from Latin in the early 1600s, about the time when authors in English got a serious grasp on the sequence “I’ll tell you want I’m gonna tell you, then I’lll tell you, then I’ll tell you what I just told you.” It’s either an introductory chapter, or in more ambitious undertakings,… Continue reading
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Henry Fielding
Today is the anniversary of Henry Fielding’s birth, in 1707. He was born in England, to a privileged family (his uncle was an Earl), he was raised by his grandmother after his mother died when he was 11. Not too much is known about his early years, but he was probably not a model child… Continue reading
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You could look it up
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) contains over 300,000 entries — and that’s just the “main” entries; there are minor entries and subentries galore. There have so far been only two editions of the OED, the first published starting in 1884 (it took until 1928 to finish the whole publication) and the second in 1989. They… Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer (among other things) located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. No surprise, she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.
Check out my other blog, Techlimitics, where I’m grappling with the nature of simplicity. You can also find some of my minor software projects at GitHub. Nothing very impressive. I mostly write tiny utilities in Python.
I find myself suddenly de-corporatized (their choice, not mine). To help keep the lights on, buy me a coffee!
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Contact
peterharbeson@me.com