Culture | In a Word
鈥楽lithy,鈥� 鈥榗hortle,鈥� and other portmanteau wordsLewis Carroll is credited with聽memorable portmanteau words, including 鈥渟lithy鈥�: a combination of 鈥渟limy鈥� and 鈥渓ithe.鈥澛�
Either a 鈥榣ender鈥� or a 鈥榣oaner鈥� you can beWords are not Platonic ideals with a separate existence. In language usage, fashion plays a crucial role.聽
How language describes, but also changes, the worldThe officiant at a wedding says, 鈥淚 hereby declare you married,鈥� and that utterance plays a crucial role in making it so.
A 鈥榥erd鈥� can be a 鈥榞eek鈥� and also a 鈥榳onk鈥�The word "nerd"聽originated comparatively recently, in 1950, in Dr. Seuss鈥� 鈥淚f I Ran the Zoo.鈥� But the concept of nerdity has a long history.
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The nuances of 鈥榗oup,鈥� 鈥榤utiny,鈥� and 鈥榠nsurrection鈥�"Insurrection"聽and "rebellion"聽imply wider participation 鈥� ordinary people, rather than members of the elite or a military unit, are the drivers.
All CAPS or none: It鈥檚 a free-for-all on social mediaWRITING EVERYTHING IN ALL CAPS IS GENERALLY UNDERSTOOD AS YELLING, our language columnist notes.
Ruling out overindulgence in capital lettersPeople don't seem to know what 鈥� or when 鈥� to capitalize. It's a problem that streches back thousands of years.
Humans, not chatbots, find capitalization trickyEarly European manuscripts don鈥檛 differentiate between uppercase and lowercase letters; all letters are the same size and come in only one shape.
English has many rules, some of them validSome rules of English you know, some you don鈥檛, and 鈥� despite what you might have been taught in grammar school 鈥� some aren鈥檛 rules at all.
Spelling tricks from the days before autocorrectIn the Middle Ages, "proper" spelling was not a cultural aspiration. People wrote words down as they pronounced them.
The words we keep having to GoogleAccording to one tally, the word that prompts the most spelling-related Google searches, by a huge margin, is "restaurant."
Why spelling well is a multilingual taskAround 60% of words in spelling bees from 1996 to 2014 derived from Latin and French, about the same proportion as in English as a whole.
Why England has 200 countesses 鈥� and zero countsThere are many 鈥� countless? 鈥� counts in the rest of Europe, but in Britain the husband of a countess is an earl. Scholars disagree about why.
When a peer is not necessarily one's equalThere were no English dukes until 1337. Up until then, the English referred to the grandest aristocrats with the good old Germanic word聽"earl."
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