Pylimitics

In 1895 George Bernard Shaw wrote an article for the Saturday Review in which he talked about a play entitled Fedora. That play, by the way, is where the “fedora hat” got its name. Shaw was not very impressed by the play. In fact, he hated it, even though it starred the then-famous actress Sarah… Continue reading

Etiquette is a set of rules for general politeness. As was put down in 1998: “Blowing one’s nose..is..set within a taken-for-granted set of social procedures and etiquette.” As you can probably tell from the spelling, “etiquette” entered English from French, and not that long ago as words go — probably in the early 1700s. But the… Continue reading

You can live in a neighborhood. Part of life is childhood. You can utter a falsehood. You can wear a hood. You can open the hood of your car (or, if you’re driving a convertible in England, you can put the hood up or down). If your childhood goes badly in a bad neighborhood and… Continue reading

Word of the day: egging Something that happens on Halloween is “egging” — pelting a car or house with eggs in order to create a mess and play a prank. It can also happen in a theater, or at least it used to; when a performer was particularly bad, the audience might throw eggs. Rotten… Continue reading

One of the problems with similar, easily-confused words is that the more we rely on spell checkers, the more susceptible we are to mixing them up without noticing. Spell checkers at least notify you when you make a spelling mistake, and probably just fix it for you. But when you use a word — which… Continue reading

The January, 1881 issue of Gentleman’s Magazine thought it would be helpful to explain that “We call it Jingoism in England; in France it is called Chauvinism; and in the United States, Bunkum.” Interesting, at least, that both “jingoism” and “chauvinism” are still in use, but the US alternative — or at least what Gentleman’s Magazine thought… Continue reading

More about lipograms at the end. In the meantime, here’s a great one by Steve Chrisomalis: “Looking at this paragraph with confusion? I’ll aid you slightly. Is any odd gap, lacuna or omission obvious to you? Got it now? No? That’s right – this is a lipogram – a book, paragraph or similar thing in… Continue reading