Pylimitics

In 1872, in Nebraska, Louise Pound was born. She grew up to be a professor of English at the University of Nebraska. More to the point, she studied folklore — specifically, slang and dialects across middle America. The thing about most of these spoken variants of language is just that; they’re spoken, and not typically… Continue reading

“Fit to be tied” is a sort of puzzling thing to say. Is it supposed to mean you’re “fit” as in able (“all fit to go”), as in “physically fit,” as in “appropriate” (“a fit subject for discussion”), carefully measured (“fitted suit”), or something else? And what’s all this about being tied? Does it mean… Continue reading

It’s easy to see that the way we use language changes over time. Dictionaries are one way to measure this, particularly over the long term. Compare a dictionary from a century ago to a modern version and you can see changes in meanings of words as well as changes in the words that are used… Continue reading

If Shakespeare is in the lead in adding words and phrases to English (and actually he might not be), Charles Dickens is the champion of character names, particularly for his villains. Dickens’ characters often have funny, ironic, sarcastic, or otherwise telling names, and some of them also enter the language. It’s not terribly unusual, even… Continue reading