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NEW FROM THE NEWSLETTER THIS WEEK Denigrate The story sounds extremely unlikely. Whether it’s just a simple mistake or an underdog’s attempt to find an insult where none was intended, I’ve no way of knowing (I’ve not seen the film, though I understand that ... Grog Parts of the bottle’s tale are correct, though. The ration of rum mixed with water once served to sailors on board British warships was indeed called grog. And the rum did come from the West Indies — the custom of serving ... Pinguescence My lesson this week is taken from a book of 1847, Lectures on the Principles and Practice of Physic by Thomas Watson: “Shut a healthy pig up in a small sty, and give him as much food as he is willing to eat ... If you subscribed to the newsletter (by e-mail or RSS), you would be able to read every new piece a week earlier. Other features include comments from subscribers and notes on words in the news. RANDOMLY CHOSEN Dracontology Strictly speaking, dracontology should refer to the study of dragons. It derives from Greek drakon, serpent (plus –ology from a Greek ending that indicated the study of a subject). It’s a kissing cousin to the ... RECENTLY ADDED PAGES Ivy League; Treasure-House of the Language; Fardel; Rum do; Co-respondent; Fidimplicitary; Fall guy; Yaoi; Metemptosis; Butterscotch; Unclarity; Verecund; Hard graft; Twaddle; Franglais; Pod slurping; Sledging; Words of the Year 2007; Try and; Stammel; Man of straw; Your name is mud; Scacchic; Naff; Safe harbour/Safe haven; Cad; Reticule; Skimble-skamble; Strait and narrow; Decimate; Shopdropping; Crimping; Horse latitudes; News; Once upon a time; Paroemiological; Hodening; W00t; Cut and dried; Teleplasmic; Gibus; Sardoodledom; Safe as Houses; Toise; Flavicomous; Mumblecore. THE NEXT WEB SITE UPDATE The next update is due on 29 March 2008, when we hope to look into the Weird Word Wigg, argue out when to use Between and among and learn the background to the British expression Steam radio. TRY MY BOOKS ...
SIC! • Who guessed that World Wide Words would be joining the rest of the media in chronicling the doings of Britney Spears? The Los Angeles Times calendar section reported recently that Ms Spears will guest star in a March 24 episode of the CBS series How I Met Your Mother. Apparently, “the pop star will portray a receptionist in a dermatologist’s office named Abby”. TECHNICAL INFORMATION This site is designed to work with the current generation of browsers. Some older ones might not be able to display every aspect of the design as it is intended to look, nor some of the special characters. If you want to download an updated browser, we recommend Firefox 2.0. The main text on every page is best viewed using Microsoft’s Georgia font. If you do not have it on your system, you can download it for Windows or the Apple Mac. Pronunciations have all now been transferred to Unicode IPA symbols; to view these requires you to have a font on your system that includes the IPA extensions, such as Lucida Sans Unicode, Charis SIL, Doulos SIL or Arial Unicode MS. If you can read this (/mɛtɛmpˈtəʊsɪs/) as IPA you have a suitable font already installed. The site preference is for Lucida Sans Unicode (click on the font name to download the version for Microsoft Windows). See your system help files for how to install fonts.
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