Pylimitics

A perfectly reasonable news story might include something like this: “The report stated ‘my friend wanted me to sick my dog on them but I wouldn’t…’[sic].” What it means is that the friend recommended commanding the doc to attack, the dog owner misspelled “sic,” and the news reporter wanted to make it clear with [sic]… Continue reading

The Latin word for shadow is “umbra,” and it shows up a number of places in English. The first place it shows up, although maybe not the first place people nowadays would think of, is the actual English word “umbra.” It’s not necessarily a literal shadow; one usage of “umbra” means ghost — either a… Continue reading

In his 1985 book “The Superior Person’s Book of Words”, Peter Bowler includes this example of an insult: “Sir, you are an apogenous, bovaristic, coprolalial, dasypygal, excerebrose, facinorous, gnathonic, hircine, ithyphallic, jumentous, kyphotic, labrose, mephitic, napiform, oligophrenial, papuliferous, quisquilian, rebarbative, saponaceous, thersitical, unguinous, ventripotent, wlatsome, xylocephalous, yirning zoophyte.” As you’ve probably noticed, that sentence is… Continue reading

Thanks mostly to air travel, it’s not unusual to meet a Brazilian, or a Pakistani or even a Canadian. You may have even met a Padanian. But you won’t find Padania on a map, in an atlas, or in the United Nations. That’s because it’s the name of a nation that doesn’t exist, but people… Continue reading