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Five minutes to find out why we say pitter patter, rather than patter pitter!

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The English language ‘laws’ you never knew you knew - BBC Reel

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The English language has no government, but sometimes, you’ll come across an odd ‘law’ that has been passed on from generation to generation, and most of us use them. Lexicographer, etymologist and broadcaster Susie Dent looks into these linguistic quirks. Animation by Adrian Hartrick and Dominika Ozynska

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Well, that’s me a blubbing mess of nostalgia, pity, pride and goosebumps quite early on a Saturday morning - fantastic read, @caitlinmoran

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Well, that’s me a blubbing mess of nostalgia, pity, pride and goosebumps quite early on a Saturday morning - fantastic read, @caitlinmoran https://t.co/jzTUTC4v9q

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Well, that’s me a blubbing mess of nostalgia, pity, pride and goosebumps quite early on a Saturday morning - fantastic read, @caitlinmoran pic.twitter.com/jzTUTC4v9q
— Ruth Wilson (@RuthWilsonPR) April 13, 2019

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Well, that’s me a blubbing mess of nostalgia, pity, pride and goosebumps quite early on a Saturday morning - fantastic read, @caitlinmoran https://t.co/jzTUTC4v9q

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Well, that’s me a blubbing mess of nostalgia, pity, pride and goosebumps quite early on a Saturday morning - fantastic read, @caitlinmoran https://t.co/jzTUTC4v9q

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Well, that’s me a blubbing mess of nostalgia, pity, pride and goosebumps quite early on a Saturday morning - fantastic read, @caitlinmoran

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My beef with vegans says more about me than them | David Mitchell

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Veganism suddenly seems to be everywhere. Here's why I'm finding it so vexing...

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From gaslighting to gammon, 2018's buzzwords reflect our toxic times | Emma Brockes

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Oxford Dictionaries' words of the year are products of our heightened politics, says Guardian columnist Emma Brockes

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Lots of lovely mini-movies about language in use

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Lots of lovely mini-movies about language in use

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Enjoy!

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The following are a selection of animations and films about language and communication that I've made over the years, covering topics from Shakespeare and swearing to emoji and robotics, and from fake news and filter bubbles to comedy and What is language? creativity. The History of English in Ten Minutes
A short animation explaining what exactly language is, where it comes from, and how it works. With perfectly justifiable cameos from René Descartes, Alan Turing and Edward Sapir.
Shakespeare Speaks
A series of very short animations that attempt to squeeze 1600 years of linguistic history into a little over ten minutes. The series looks at how English grew from a small local variety into a major global language, and uncovers the sources of English words and phrases from Shakespeare and the King James Bible to American popular culture and the digital age. All narrated in a reassuringly deadpan way by Clive Anderson. The series won a 'Learning on Screen' award in 2012.
Language and Creativity
A series of twenty short episode teaching a selection of phrases and idioms that were coined or popularised by Shakespeare. 'Dead as a doornail'; 'It's all Greek to me'; that sort of thing. Produced by BBC Learning English in association with the OU. The series was a Runner-up in the 'Resources for Secondary and Higher Learners' category at the English Speaking Union awards, 2016, and was nominated for a British Council ELTon Award in 'Innovation in learner resources' in 2017.
A Brief History of Emoji
A short animation which makes a valiant attempt at defining the concept of creativity, and explaining what it has to do with language. The video looks at the ways people use language in creative ways, at the roles linguistic creativity plays in society, and at how we can go about studying it.
Fake news, filter bubbles and sharing wisely!
A short film investigating the emoji phenomenon, explaining why they've become such an important part of modern-day culture, and how they work as a means of communication. Narrated by radio personality Lauren Laverne.
Narrative in Journalism and Politics
Three short animations about the circulation of information on social media, looking at issues such as sharing, online filter bubbles and the impact of fake news. Narrated by Josie Long.
Teaching a robot how to speak
An interview with broadcaster Evan Davies and journalist James Ball, in which they discuss the importance of narrative for news reporting, and the dangers of letting the story lead the facts.
The Language of Comedy
A short documentary asking whether it's ever going to be likely that robots will be able to learn to speak like humans; and what the research that's addressing this challenge can teach us about the complexity of human language.
Why do people swear?
Six short videos looking at the way comedians manipulate language for comedic purposes. Featuring Charlie Higson talking about catchphrases; Henning Wehn on cross cultural humour; David McGilivray discussing innuendo and puns; Isy Suttie on crafting a joke; and Graham Fellows on creating his character John Shuttleworth.

A film all about the linguistics of swearing. Why we do it and what it can tell us about the culture in which we live. Made in collaboration with Tilt, presented by Adam Woollard and Theo Marlow, and with expert insight from Emma Byrne, Jean-Marc Dewaele, Melissa Mohr and Sean Burke.

Shorter versions of the four interview sections of the film are available here:

Melissa Mohr on the history of swearing

Jean-Marc Dewaele on cross-cultural swearing

Emma Byrne on the science of swearing
English in the European Union
Sean Burke on swearing, comedy and creativity
Shakespeare Original Pronunciation
A short video, made in the early 2010s, looking at the use of English in European politics, and especially its status as the de facto working language for the European Parliament.
Interviews
An introduction with David and Ben Crystal to 'Original Pronunciation' productions of Shakespeare, and what they reveal about the history of the English language.

Creativity and literary agents. An interview with Jonny Geller, CEO of Curtis Brown, about the role of the literary agent in the creative process.

What's fake about 'fake news'? An interview I gave with Hugh Mcfaul about the concept of fake news.

Stories on social media and fake news. An interview I gave with Diggit Magazine, alongside Alexandra Georgakopoulou, about my research into social media and politics.

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The following are a selection of animations and films about language and communication that I've made over the years, covering topics from Shakespeare and swearing to emoji and robotics, and from fake news and filter bubbles to comedy and creativity. What is language? A short animation explaining what exactly language is, where it comes from, and how...

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https://mrefinch.wordpress.com/2018/10/27/goldensentences/

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According to Merriam Webster...

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Adjectives are those useful words that describe nouns and pronouns. Words like high and slow and sweet.

Sometimes, though, we see words we're told are nouns doing that same job:

In each of these, the italicized word is defined in dictionaries only as a noun, but there it is, modifying another noun. Which is what adjectives do, right?

Well, yes. But some nouns do it too. They're called "attributive nouns." Attributive here means "joined directly to a noun in order to describe it."

So what distinguishes attributive nouns from adjectives? The categorization can be tricky, but here are two general rules:

1. An attributive noun can only modify a noun when it comes immediately before it: It's a business meeting, not a meeting that is business.

2. Attributive nouns don't have comparative forms, but many adjectives do: One building can be taller or more impressive than another, but it can't be more apartment than another.

While attributive nouns can come in pairs (or trios), they don't get separated by a comma:

the experienced summer baseball league staff

new work safety rules

Finally, should an attributive noun be used with a real adjective, the adjective always comes first:

Attributive nouns do some of the same work that adjectives do, but that doesn't mean they're not nouns. Think of them as nouns that learned how to multitask.

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Adjectives are those useful words that describe nouns and pronouns. Words like high and slow and sweet. Sometimes, though, we see words we're told are nouns doing that same job: In each of these, the italicized word is defined in dictionaries only as a noun, but there it is, modifying another noun.

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Just brilliant!

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"If you lay down with dogs you get fleas" says Labour MP David Lammy over the treatment of  "Windrush" generation UK residents

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"If you lay down with dogs you get fleas" says Labour MP David Lammy over the treatment of  "Windrush" generation UK residents https://t.co/hKQxn2HBiP

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"If you lay down with dogs you get fleas" says Labour MP David Lammy over the treatment of "Windrush" generation UK residents pic.twitter.com/hKQxn2HBiP
— Sky News (@SkyNews) April 16, 2018

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"If you lay down with dogs you get fleas" says Labour MP David Lammy over the treatment of  "Windrush" generation UK residents https://t.co/hKQxn2HBiP

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"If you lay down with dogs you get fleas" says Labour MP David Lammy over the treatment of  "Windrush" generation UK residents https://t.co/hKQxn2HBiP

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"If you lay down with dogs you get fleas" says Labour MP David Lammy over the treatment of  "Windrush" generation UK residents

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What did the Jedi linguist say to her Padawan apprentices? - Metaphors be with you.

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Star Wars: A Language Story║Lindsay Does Languages Video

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Improving your writing through mini-tests.

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Improving your writing through mini-tests.

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If you're interested enough in grammar to have made it this far, you likely feel pretty confident about your understanding of what nouns and verbs are. Both are super important, though, so we'll review them here anyway.

Teachers often tell us that a noun is a person, place, or thing. That's mostly right. A more nuanced definition is that a noun is a word that refers to a thing ( book), a person ( Betty Crocker), an animal ( cat), a place ( Springfield), a quality ( softness), an idea ( justice), or an action ( yodeling).

You may think of verbs as "action words" but that too is a little oversimplified. Verbs can express an action ( yodel), an occurrence ( develop), or a state of being ( exist). They're often the grammatical center of the predicate and typically have full descriptive meaning and characterizing quality-except when they don't; some verbs really only serve to connect, like the is in Grammar is complicated.

Verbs have multiple forms. The basic form is called the infinitive. It's the stripped-down form like, yodel or flee.

Nouns and verbs often go about with other word-friends. Sometimes they form noun phrases or verb phrases. Such phrases can do a lot of the same things that nouns or verbs alone can do. To qualify as a noun or verb phrase, a group of words must: express a single idea; function as a single part of speech; not include both a subject and a predicate. Noun phrases refer to one of the things nouns refer to and answer the question "What?" or "Who?" Verb phrases express what verbs express: an action, occurrence, or state of being.

MORE VERB TERMS: Verbs are more complicated than they look

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8 Grammar Terms You Used to Know, But Forgot

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If you're interested enough in grammar to have made it this far, you likely feel pretty confident about your understanding of what nouns and verbs are. Both are super important, though, so we'll review them here anyway. Teachers often tell us that a noun is a person, place, or thing.

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Language changes - where do they come from?

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Language changes - where do they come from?

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People sure get mad about words. Every month for a few years now I've been a "grammar enthusiast" guest on ABC Radio Melbourne. We do talkback and people call in with their grammar-related comments. Sometimes they ask questions. Last month Chris from Northcote, aged 10, wanted to know whether he should write "Chris' cricket bat" or "Chris's cricket bat", but mostly the segment is an airing of grievances. A catharsis. A blood-letting. It is public therapy and I'm pleased to be part of it.

But often I feel I'm not the adviser they're looking for. People want me to bang the grammar gavel and solemnly rule that "irregardless" is not a word, and that it's wrong to say your team is "versing" another team, and that sports commentators who start sentences with "for mine" must be driven from our towns and cities. (There are lots of complaints about sports commentary.)

So really it's a segment about language change. And I love language change! Thus, I disappoint the listeners. Change is the thing they revile.

"Some Method should be thought on for ascertaining and fixing our Language for ever," wrote Jonathan Swift in 1712. His instinct was to preserve. But languages evolve - like viruses. English has been a very successful virus, now spoken by 1.5 billion earthlings thanks to its wily shape shifting. And these days, our human desire to somehow fix the language in place is being thwarted at a faster pace than ever.

"The internet has REVOLUTIONISED language change," enthuses former AP Stylebook editor David Minthorn, in one of the most gloriously nerdy videos on YouTube. A few weeks ago, Dictionary of Slang author Jonathon Green gleefully tweeted: "... the lexicographer's challenge was always: 'where do we find our data'. Now it's where do we dare allow ourselves to stop looking. Because there is always more on offer."

Jonathon Green (@MisterSlang)
Further to the @andydickson @guardian @OED piece, the (slang) lexicographer's challenge was always: 'where do we find our data'. Now it's where do we dare allow ourselves to stop looking. Because there is always more on offer.

Now that every English speaker in the world can talk to every other English speaker in the world, the virus is mutating vociferously. The modern grievance airer must keep pace. So I have compiled a list of changes for which to watch out in 2018.

1. Semantic change thanks to the internet

Trolls are not just bridge dwellers anymore, a cloud isn't always a visible mass of condensed watery vapour and a mouse is sometimes a mouse. Computers have given us so much. But mainly they have given us the internet, where we can wake to a new definition of woke. Definition expansions happen when usages spread from small language communities to larger ones. "Spread" being the key word because, as we know, "fetch" never happened.

My colleague recently tweeted to apologise that her posts were "so thirsty tonight". The next day I asked what "thirsty" meant and I have never felt so old. She did, in fact, act quite extra about it. I'm usually the goat at knowing words so I was salty. And her outfit was snatched, which made things worse. The whole thing was not lit and I have receipts.

2. Syntactical change thanks to the internet

I am tired because life. I am angry because the internet. "Because" is a preposition now! Ewww. But also I love it. If I were a 2014 Facebook user, I'd comment: "This." Because "this", as a demonstrative pronoun, can be useful in place of an approving clause or exclamation. Those who use the "This" sentence, though, are a dying breed. So if you haven't started on that, skip straight to an emoji for your emphatic enjoiner.☝️

3. Semantic and syntactical change thanks to television

Is this a thing? Yes it is. In fact "a thing" is a thing, thanks to television show The West Wing. And another thing is "re-gifting", a verb birthed from a noun by Seinfeld's Elaine Benes. Annoyed much? Hardly anyone stuck the terminal adverb "much" on things before Buffy did. These changes are old news in 2018, though. I think television might be losing its edge.

4. Inflection change led by Kanye West

"Real rappers is hard to find." If anyone can eliminate verb modification from English, it's Kanye. About time!

5. Conversion thanks to advertising

In grammar, "conversion" refers to a word's shift into a different role or part of speech. It's what happened when Facebook converted "friend" from a noun into a verb (and gave us the vital new infinitive "to unfriend") and when corporate memos did the same thing to "action". These changes were actioned a while ago, however. The new thing is turning adjectives into nouns. Use Nutella and you're "spreading the happy"; shop at Sephora and you're "celebrating your extraordinary"; connect to the internet with AT&T and you're "rethinking possible". If you cannot keep up, La Trobe University will help you to "find your clever".

6. Word and phrase coinages from the internet meme factory

New words! New phrases! Sure, they're annoying, but if they're useful, they stick.

One of them stuck hard late last year when the Macquarie Dictionary named "milkshake duck" its word of the year. Noun: a person who is initially viewed positively by the media but is then discovered to have something questionable about them that causes a sharp decline in their popularity. The term was coined in 2016 by Australian Twitter user Ben Ward, aka @pixelatedboat: "The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the duck is racist."

pixelated boat [ASMR] binaural ~4 hours~ (@pixelatedboat)
The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the duck is racist

Twitter seems to invent words faster than any other social media platform. Not that they all catch on. In 2015 I cheered for brave user @murrman5 and his new noun: "'I came downstairs for a zip of juice and noticed the TV was gone so I called you guys' [cop stops writing] did you say zip of juice?" Retweets: 3,293, but I haven't heard a peep about "zip" since. For a brief moment, though, to use a phrase coined last month by the Victorian roads minister, Luke Donnellan, it was " better than a kick in the dick ".

7. Punctuation change led by smartphones

If you've ever typed "apple" into your phone and been autocorrected to "Apple", you'll know that small-screen communication is causing George Orwell to spin like a beachball in his grave. But punctuation seems to be the real victim of our incessant texting.

A small storm blew up in 2016 when senior grammarian David Crystal observed a change in the character of the full stop. He put forward, at a British writers festival, that in text messages the full stop has ceased to be a humble and simple ender of sentences. Instead, it now turns what might otherwise be a friendly "Fine!" into a passive-aggressive "Fine." Interviewed afterwards, Crystal explained: "It is not necessary to use a period in a text message, so to make something explicit that is already implicit makes a point of it. It's like when you say, 'I am not going - period.' It's a mark. It can be aggressive. It can be emphatic. It can mean, 'I have no more to say'."

Is texting putting the full stop out to pasture? In its report on the incident, the New York Times included not a single full stop - and truth be told I didn't notice [And did you notice the absence of one here?]

8. 'Meaning leakage' thanks to politicians, bureaucrats and business writers

There's a dark side to hating change. Self-appointed language gatekeepers are often attempting to enforce a central English. This sort of intransigent rule-booking reaches its stinky nadir in the refusal to accept a word's semantic shift into slur-dom (as in "fag") or a word's reclamation by the slurred themselves (as in "queer"). It's grammatically blinkered and, I feel, a failure of the human spirit.

But some gatekeeping comes from a generous place, the place where words are valued for their meaning-carrying powers. These grievers rage against the kind of language change that allows people to communicate less. To obscure truth, as Don Watson would say, in a weaselly way.

In US political reporting we now have "alt right", a term that paints a benign sheen over a white nationalist branch of conservatism. In its topical guide for the 2016 election, AP Stylebook ruled alt right "a public-relations device to make its supporters' actual beliefs less clear and more acceptable to a broader audience".

In bureaucracy, we have people noun-ifying verbs to distance themselves from any clear action: "Consideration will be given by the committee to the provision of advice on this policy issue in the near future." (The advising is in there somewhere, but it's a long way from the main verb.)

In business, as ever, we have people making things up to sound, as they might say, "leading-edge". Projects are "moving forward" and "synergistic", and people are "unpacking" "the takeaway".

But let's take this offline. The real intention of such jargon is to make others feel like lesser human assets. So if you want to stay ahead of the curve this year, definitely keep an eye out for "coopertition", "change agent", "de-skilling" and "invitation to leave (ITL)". Or gouge your eyes out. Either way, some grievances deserve to be aired.

* Penny's Melbourne-based writing school The Good Copy is holding Word Alert!, a festival of crossword spelling and grammar at the NGV's Melbourne Art Book Fair on 16, 17 and 18 March
Topics

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Grammar gripes: why do we love to complain about language?

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People sure get mad about words. Every month for a few years now I've been a "grammar enthusiast" guest on ABC Radio Melbourne. We do talkback and people call in with their grammar-related comments. Sometimes they ask questions.

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What is superfluous?

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Start with "things" and "stuff"

Newsprint is on life support, emojis are multiplying faster than hungry Gremlins, and 300 million people worldwide strive to make their point in 140 or fewer characters.

People don't have the time or the attention span to read any more words than necessary. You want your readers to hear you out, understand your message, and perhaps be entertained, right? Here's a list of words to eliminate to help you write more succinctly.
1. That
It's superfluous most of the time. Open any document you've got drafted on your desktop, and find a sentence with that in it. Read it out loud. Now read it again without that. If the sentence works without it, delete it. Also? Don't use that when you refer to people. "I have several friends that live in the neighborhood." No. No, you don't. You have friends who. Not friends that.
2. Went
I went to school. Or the store, or to church, or to a conference, to Vegas, wherever it is you're inclined to go. Instead of went, consider drove, skated, walked, ran, flew. There are any number of ways to move from here to there. Pick one. Don't be lazy and miss the chance to add to your story.
3. Honestly
People use honestly to add emphasis. The problem is, the minute you tell your reader this particular statement is honest, you've implied the rest of your words were not. #Awkward
4. Absolutely
Adding this word to most sentences is redundant. Something is either necessary, or it isn't. Absolutely necessary doesn't make it more necessary. If you recommend an essential course to your new employees, it's essential. Coincidentally, the definition of essential is absolutely necessary. Chicken or egg, eh?
5. Very
Accurate adjectives don't need qualifiers. If you need to qualify it? Replace it.

Very is intended to magnify a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. What it does is makes your statement less specific. If you're very happy? Be ecstatic. If you're very sad, perhaps you're melancholy or depressed. Woebegone, even. Very sad is a lazy way of making your point. Another pitfall of using very as a modifier? It's subjective. Very cold and very tall mean different things to different people. Be specific. She's 6'3″ and it's 13 degrees below freezing? These make your story better while also ensuring the reader understands the point you're making.
6. Really
Unless you're a Valley Girl, visiting from 1985, there's no need to use really to modify an adjective. Or a verb. Or an adverb. Pick a different word to make your point. And never repeat really, or very for that matter. That's really, really bad writing.
If you are visiting from 1985? Please bring the birth certificate for my Cabbage Patch Doll on your next visit. Thanks.
7. Amazing
The word means "causing great surprise or sudden wonder." It's synonymous with wonderful, incredible, startling, marvelous, astonishing, astounding, remarkable, miraculous, surprising, mind-blowing, and staggering. You get the point, right? It's everywhere. It's in corporate slogans. It dominated the Academy Awards acceptance speeches. It's all over social media. It's discussed in pre-game shows and post-game shows.

Newsflash: If everything is amazing, nothing is.
8. Always
Absolutes lock the writer into a position, sound conceited and close-minded, and often open the door to criticism regarding inaccuracies. Always is rarely true. Unless you're giving written commands or instruction, find another word.
9. Never
See: Always.
10. Literally
Literally means literal. Actually happening as stated. Without exaggeration. More often than not, when the term is used, the writer means figuratively. Whatever is happening is being described metaphorically. No one actually "waits on pins and needles." How uncomfortable would that be?
11. Just
It's a filler word and it makes your sentence weaker, not stronger. Unless you're using it as a synonym for equitable, fair, even-handed, or impartial, don't use it at all.
12. Maybe
This makes you sound uninformed, unsure of the facts you're presenting. Regardless of the topic, do the legwork, be sure, write an informed piece. The only thing you communicate when you include these words is uncertainty.
13. Stuff
This word is casual, generic even. It serves as a placeholder for something better. If the details of the stuff aren't important enough to be included in the piece? Don't reference it at all. If you tell your reader to take your course because they'll learn a lot of stuff? They're likely to tell you to stuff it.
14. Things
See: Stuff.
15. Irregardless
This doesn't mean what you think it means, Jefe. It means regardless. It is literally (see what I did there?) defined as: regardless. Don't use it. Save yourself the embarrassment.

Whether you're ghostwriting for your CEO, updating a blog, selling a product, or finishing your master's thesis, you need to keep your reader engaged. These 15 words are a great place to start trimming the fat from your prose. Bonus? You'll sound smarter.
This post is in partnership with The Muse. The article above was originally published on The Muse More from The Muse: Read next: What Do the Words You Use Say About You? Listen to the most important stories of the day.

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15 Words You Need to Eliminate From Your Vocabulary

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Start with "things" and "stuff" Newsprint is on life support, emojis are multiplying faster than hungry Gremlins, and 300 million people worldwide strive to make their point in 140 or fewer characters. People don't have the time or the attention span to read any more words than necessary.

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Begin to critically think about what is in print and how it affects our thinking...

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Every day the news is filled with stories about war, terrorism, crime, pollution, inequality, drug abuse and oppression. And it's not just the headlines we're talking about; it's the op-eds and long-form stories as well. Magazine covers warn us of coming anarchies, plagues, epidemics, collapses, and so many "crises" (farm, health, retirement, welfare, energy, deficit) that copywriters have had to escalate to the redundant "serious crisis."

Whether or not the world really is getting worse, the nature of news will interact with the nature of cognition to make us think that it is.

News is about things that happen, not things that don't happen. We never see a journalist saying to the camera, "I'm reporting live from a country where a war has not broken out"- or a city that has not been bombed, or a school that has not been shot up. As long as bad things have not vanished from the face of the earth, there will always be enough incidents to fill the news, especially when billions of smartphones turn most of the world's population into crime reporters and war correspondents.

And among the things that do happen, the positive and negative ones unfold on different timelines. The news, far from being a "first draft of history," is closer to play-by-play sports commentary. It focuses on discrete events, generally those that took place since the last edition (in earlier times, the day before; now, seconds before).

Bad things can happen quickly, but good things aren't built in a day, and as they unfold, they will be out of sync with the news cycle. The peace researcher John Galtung pointed out that if a newspaper came out once every 50 years, it would not report half a century of celebrity gossip and political scandals. It would report momentous global changes such as the increase in life expectancy.

The nature of news is likely to distort people's view of the world because of a mental bug that the psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman called the Availability heuristic: people estimate the probability of an event or the frequency of a kind of thing by the ease with which instances come to mind. In many walks of life this is a serviceable rule of thumb. But whenever a memory turns up high in the result list of the mind's search engine for reasons other than frequency-because it is recent, vivid, gory, distinctive, or upsetting-people will overestimate how likely it is in the world.

Plane crashes always make the news, but car crashes, which kill far more people, almost never do. Not surprisingly, many people have a fear of flying, but almost no one has a fear of driving. People rank tornadoes (which kill about 50 Americans a year) as a more common cause of death than asthma (which kills more than 4,000 Americans a year), presumably because tornadoes make for better television.

The nature of news is likely to distort people's view of the world

The data scientist Kalev Leetaru applied a technique called sentiment mining to every article published in the New York Times between 1945 and 2005, and to an archive of translated articles and broadcasts from 130 countries between 1979 and 2010. Sentiment mining assesses the emotional tone of a text by tallying the number and contexts of words with positive and negative connotations, like good, nice, terrible, and horrific.

Putting aside the wiggles and waves that reflect the crises of the day, we see that the impression that the news has become more negative over time is real. The New York Times got steadily more morose from the early 1960s to the early 1970s, lightened up a bit (but just a bit) in the 1980s and 1990s, and then sank into a progressively worse mood in the first decade of the new century. News outlets in the rest of the world, too, became gloomier and gloomier from the late 1970s to the present day.

The consequences of negative news are themselves negative. Far from being better informed, heavy newswatchers can become miscalibrated. They worry more about crime, even when rates are falling, and sometimes they part company with reality altogether: a 2016 poll found that a large majority of Americans follow news about Isis closely, and 77% agreed that "Islamic militants operating in Syria and Iraq pose a serious threat to the existence or survival of the United States," a belief that is nothing short of delusional.

Consumers of negative news, not surprisingly, become glum: a recent literature review cited "misperception of risk, anxiety, lower mood levels, learned helplessness, contempt and hostility towards others, desensitization, and in some cases, ... complete avoidance of the news." And they become fatalistic, saying things like "Why should I vote? It's not gonna help," or "I could donate money, but there's just gonna be another kid who's starving next week."

Relentless negativity can have other unintended consequences, and recently a few journalists have begun to point them out. In the wake of the 2016 American election, the New York Times writers David Bornstein and Tina Rosenberg reflected on the media's role in its shocking outcome:

Trump was the beneficiary of a belief- near universal in American journalism-that "serious news" can essentially be defined as "what's going wrong... For decades, journalism's steady focus on problems and seemingly incurable pathologies was preparing the soil that allowed Trump's seeds of discontent and despair to take root. .. One consequence is that many Americans today have difficulty imagining, valuing or even believing in the promise of incremental system change, which leads to a greater appetite for revolutionary, smash-the-machine change."

Bornstein and Rosenberg don't blame the usual culprits (cable TV, social media, late-night comedians) but instead trace it to the shift during the Vietnam and Watergate eras from glorifying leaders to checking their power-with an overshoot toward indiscriminate cynicism, in which everything about America's civic actors invites an aggressive takedown.

It's easy to see how the Availability heuristic, stoked by the news policy "If it bleeds, it leads," could induce a sense of gloom about the state of the world. Media scholars who tally news stories of different kinds, or present editors with a menu of possible stories and see which they pick and how they display them, have confirmed that the gatekeepers prefer negative to positive coverage, holding the events constant.

That in turn provides an easy formula for pessimists on the editorial page: make a list of all the worst things that are happening anywhere on the planet that week, and you have an impressive-sounding-but ultimately irrational-case that civilization has never faced greater peril.

Adapted from Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker, published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2018 by Steven Pinker.

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The media exaggerates negative news. This distortion has consequences | Steven Pinker

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Every day the news is filled with stories about war, terrorism, crime, pollution, inequality, drug abuse and oppression. And it's not just the headlines we're talking about; it's the op-eds and long-form stories as well.

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What would be your word?

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In June 2016, Twitter user @PixelatedBoat coined a neologism that was arguably robbed as Oxford Dictionaries' 2017 word of the year: "Milkshake duck".

In June 2016, Twitter user @PixelatedBoat coined a neologism that was arguably robbed as Oxford Dictionaries' 2017 word of the year: "Milkshake duck".

"Youthquake" isn't even a word (@pixelatedboat)
The whole internet loves Milkshake Duck, a lovely duck that drinks milkshakes! *5 seconds later* We regret to inform you the duck is racist

The tweet went viral for neatly describing a now familiar arc, where the internet rushes en masse to embrace something or someone as cute, worthy, fun or funny - then just as quickly drops it, when it's revealed to somehow be unpleasantly complicated.

In just 140 characters, as was the style at the time, @PixelatedBoat encapsulated social media's inclination to cast heroes and villains in black and white; to gloss over nuance and pay for it later; its short-sightedness, its fickleness, its breakneck pace, and its penchant for animals doing human things.

With 30,000 favourites to date, the tweet is about as close to canon as it gets on a platform built for goldfish memories. "Milkshake duck" has become a useful shorthand, referenced if (or, as seems increasingly the case, when) a favourite is revealed to be problematic.

"Milkshake duck is doing the rounds again," observed @PixelatedBoat in May, nearly a year after the lovely, racist duck's debut. "Did someone fuck up real bad?"

Its impact was cemented on Friday when it was recognised by Oxford Dictionaries on its shortlist for word of the year, along with other necessary and oft-reached-for neologisms as "broflake", "gorpcore" and "newsjacking".

Oxford Dictionaries (@OxfordWords)
'Milkshake Duck' was one of our shortlisted words for #WordOfTheYear. Do you know the story of the term? https://t.co/rMWX2ZS5Tg

In one of the many unjust upsets we've become resigned to in the past 18 months, each of those lost out to "youthquake": a word apparently for social or political change led by young people that I'd wager as recently as Thursday had never been spoken aloud. It was explained as "the right note on which to end a difficult and divisive year", as a hopeful word - evidencing the lengths Oxford Dictionaries had to go to to find one.

Milkshake duck, on the other hand, became the defining term for a recurring phenomenon unique to our times. According to Google Trends, it had been used fairly consistently since June, when Oxford Dictionaries predicted that "Pixelated Boat may see continuing use of their accidental coinage"; youthquake, on the other hand, rumbled below the threshold of recognition.

@PixelatedBoat, meanwhile, has a new name on Twitter: "Youthquake isn't even a word".

"Youthquake" isn't even a word (@pixelatedboat)
New display name for the articles that embedded the duck tweet

To add to the indignity of milkshake duck's loss, it had demonstrated its usefulness only days before, in the case of Keaton Jones: a young boy in Tennessee who went viral for tearfully denouncing his bullies. What could be more clearly deserving of sympathy and support?

*5 seconds later*

Shortly after celebrities, athletes and Donald Trump Jr had rallied behind Keaton, his mother was alleged to have "been involved in murky - or outright inflammatory - doings", to quote from Oxford Dictionaries' definition of "milkshake duck". With fake accounts further muddying the waters, some facts remain unclear even now - but if it quacks like a milkshake duck, and posts "ironic" photos with Confederate flags like one...

@PixelatedBoat told me that, as far as memory served, his iconic tweet had been inspired by the backlash to "Chewbacca Mom", whose full-throated enjoyment of a Star Wars mask streamed on Facebook in May 2016 broke video records for the year. After having had "the internet in absolute hysterics", there was a growing rumble of criticism - a booquake, if you will(... no?) - of her monetising her viral fame and "white mediocrity".

A better example? "The Hot Florida Cop was about as perfect as a Milkshake duck gets," said @PixelatedBoat, referring to a recent tale of two headlines:

14 September: "Florida 'hot cops' become Internet sensation after Hurricane Irma Facebook post"

15 September: "Florida 'hot cop' removed from force amid anti-Semitic claims"

It's an "inevitable consequence" of time spent in the social media spotlight, said @PixelatedBoat. "Someone can get famous in a matter of hours, but there's also a good chance they've created a public record of all their worst opinions." The internet's impulse to seek those opinions out, however, is harder to parse.

Someone saw the lovely duck, famous for drinking its milkshake, and thought to dig through its chequered history for the public good. The duck's racism certainly complicates its cuteness, and resulting viral fame, but doesn't necessarily negate it. Milkshake ducks are made, not born. And for what?

"Yeah, I don't really understand the motivation, except that people are motivated to do anything that gets them attention online, and finding the 'gotcha' on something currently popular is one way of doing that," said @PixelatedBoat. "And, I guess, it's good business if you're the website that digs up the dirt - it's a way of generating more clicks out of a viral story."

@PixelatedBoat felt bad, said @PixelatedBoat, for Ken Bone, the man made into a meme after asking a question during the town hall debate of last year's US presidential election. Some of the subsequent scrutiny of Bone's personal life "seemed pointlessly cruel".

But that's the way of the internet ecosystem, it seems - building up people who didn't ask for it, tearing them down under separate standards, "as flies to wanton boys", etc. @PixelatedBoat, who declined to be quoted under his real name, is aware he is not exempt.

"It's terrifying that I created a meme that will destroy me when I inevitably do a problematic tweet," he tweeted, on milkshake duck's one-year anniversary. "Milkshake duck is my sword of Damocles."

"Youthquake" isn't even a word (@pixelatedboat)
It's terrifying that I created a meme that will destroy me when I inevitably do a problematic tweet. Milkshake Duck is my sword of Damocles

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What is a milkshake duck? And why isn't it the word of the year?

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In June 2016, Twitter user @PixelatedBoat coined a neologism that was arguably robbed as Oxford Dictionaries' 2017 word of the year: "Milkshake duck". In June 2016, Twitter user @PixelatedBoat coined a neologism that was arguably robbed as Oxford Dictionaries' 2017 word of the year: "Milkshake duck".

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Read this passionate speech and then find it on youtube.

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My goodness! You guys are fired up!

Well, let me just say hello everyone. I am so thrilled to be here with you all today in New Hampshire. This is like home to me, and this day - thank you for a beautiful fall day. You just ordered this day up for me, didn't you? It's great to be here.

Let me start by thanking your fabulous governor, your next US senator, Maggie Hassan. I want to thank her for that lovely introduction. I also want to recognize your Congresswoman Annie McKlane Kuster, who's a dear, dear friend. Your soon-to-be congresswoman once again, Carol Shea Porter - all of whom have been just terrific friends to us. And your executive council and candidate for governor, Colin Van Ostern.

And, of course, thanks to all of you for taking the time to be here today.

Audience member: We love you!

Thanks so much. That's very sweet of you. I love you guys too. I can't believe it's just a few weeks before election day, as we come together to support the next president and vice-president of the United States, Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine! And New Hampshire is going to be important, as always.

So I'm going to get a little serious here, because I think we can all agree that this has been a rough week in an already rough election. This week has been particularly interesting for me personally because it has been a week of profound contrast.

See, on Tuesday, at the White House, we celebrated the International Day of the Girl and Let Girls Learn, and it was a wonderful celebration. It was the last event that I'm going to be doing as first lady for Let Girls Learn. And I had the pleasure of spending hours talking to some of the most amazing young women you will ever meet, young girls here in the US and all around the world. And we talked about their hopes and their dreams. We talked about their aspirations. See, because many of these girls have faced unthinkable obstacles just to attend school, jeopardizing their personal safety, their freedom, risking the rejection of their families and communities.

So I thought it would be important to remind these young women how valuable and precious they are. I wanted them to understand that the measure of any society is how it treats its women and girls. And I told them that they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, and I told them that they should disregard anyone who demeans or devalues them, and that they should make their voices heard in the world. And I walked away feeling so inspired, just like I'm inspired by all the young people here - and I was so uplifted by these girls. That was Tuesday.

And now, here I am, out on the campaign trail in an election where we have consistently been hearing hurtful, hateful language about women - language that has been painful for so many of us, not just as women, but as parents trying to protect our children and raise them to be caring, respectful adults, and as citizens who think that our nation's leaders should meet basic standards of human decency.

The fact is that in this election, we have a candidate for president of the United States who, over the course of his lifetime and the course of this campaign, has said things about women that are so shocking, so demeaning that I simply will not repeat anything here today. And last week, we saw this candidate actually bragging about sexually assaulting women. And I can't believe that I'm saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women.

And I have to tell you that I can't stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn't have predicted. So while I'd love nothing more than to pretend like this isn't happening, and to come out here and do my normal campaign speech, it would be dishonest and disingenuous of me to just move on to the next thing like this was all just a bad dream.

This is not something that we can ignore. It's not something we can just sweep under the rug as just another disturbing footnote in a sad election season. Because this was not just a "lewd conversation". This wasn't just locker-room banter. This was a powerful individual speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior, and actually bragging about kissing and groping women, using language so obscene that many of us were worried about our children hearing it when we turn on the TV.

And to make matters worse, it now seems very clear that this isn't an isolated incident. It's one of countless examples of how he has treated women his whole life. And I have to tell you that I listen to all of this and I feel it so personally, and I'm sure that many of you do too, particularly the women. The shameful comments about our bodies. The disrespect of our ambitions and intellect. The belief that you can do anything you want to a woman.

It is cruel. It's frightening. And the truth is, it hurts. It hurts. It's like that sick, sinking feeling you get when you're walking down the street minding your own business and some guy yells out vulgar words about your body. Or when you see that guy at work that stands just a little too close, stares a little too long, and makes you feel uncomfortable in your own skin.

It's that feeling of terror and violation that too many women have felt when someone has grabbed them, or forced himself on them and they've said no but he didn't listen - something that we know happens on college campuses and countless other places every single day. It reminds us of stories we heard from our mothers and grandmothers about how, back in their day, the boss could say and do whatever he pleased to the women in the office, and even though they worked so hard, jumped over every hurdle to prove themselves, it was never enough.

We thought all of that was ancient history, didn't we? And so many have worked for so many years to end this kind of violence and abuse and disrespect, but here we are in 2016 and we're hearing these exact same things every day on the campaign trail. We are drowning in it. And all of us are doing what women have always done: we're trying to keep our heads above water, just trying to get through it, trying to pretend like this doesn't really bother us maybe because we think that admitting how much it hurts makes us as women look weak.

Maybe we're afraid to be that vulnerable. Maybe we've grown accustomed to swallowing these emotions and staying quiet, because we've seen that people often won't take our word over his. Or maybe we don't want to believe that there are still people out there who think so little of us as women. Too many are treating this as just another day's headline, as if our outrage is overblown or unwarranted, as if this is normal, just politics as usual.

But, New Hampshire, be clear: this is not normal. This is not politics as usual. This is disgraceful. It is intolerable. And it doesn't matter what party you belong to - Democrat, Republican, independent - no woman deserves to be treated this way. None of us deserves this kind of abuse.

And I know it's a campaign, but this isn't about politics. It's about basic human decency. It's about right and wrong. And we simply cannot endure this, or expose our children to this any - not for another minute, and let alone for four years. Now is the time for all of us to stand up and say enough is enough. This has got to stop right now.

Because consider this: if all of this is painful to us as grown women, what do you think this is doing to our children? What message are our little girls hearing about who they should look like, how they should act? What lessons are they learning about their value as professionals, as human beings, about their dreams and aspirations? And how is this affecting men and boys in this country? Because I can tell you that the men in my life do not talk about women like this. And I know that my family is not unusual. And to dismiss this as everyday locker-room talk is an insult to decent men everywhere.

The men that you and I know don't treat women this way. They are loving fathers who are sickened by the thought of their daughters being exposed to this kind of vicious language about women. They are husbands and brothers and sons who don't tolerate women being treated and demeaned and disrespected. And like us, these men are worried about the impact this election is having on our boys who are looking for role models of what it means to be a man.

In fact, someone recently told me a story about their six-year-old son who one day was watching the news - they were watching the news together. And the little boy, out of the blue, said, "I think Hillary Clinton will be president." And his mom said, "Well, why do you say that?" And this little six-year-old said, "Because the other guy called someone a piggy and," he said, "You cannot be president if you call someone a piggy."

So even a six-year-old knows better. A six-year-old knows that this is not how adults behave. This is not how decent human beings behave. And this is certainly not how someone who wants to be president of the United States behaves.

Because let's be very clear: strong men - men who are truly role models - don't need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful. People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together. And that is what we need in our next president. We need someone who is a uniting force in this country. We need someone who will heal the wounds that divide us, someone who truly cares about us and our children, someone with strength and compassion to lead this country forward.

And let me tell you, I'm here today because I believe with all of my heart that Hillary Clinton will be that president.

See, we know that Hillary is the right person for the job because we've seen her character and commitment not just in this campaign, but over the course of her entire life. The fact is that Hillary embodies so many of the values that we try so hard to teach our young people. We tell our young people "work hard in school, get a good education". We encourage them to use that education to help others - which is exactly what Hillary did with her college and law degrees, advocating for kids with disabilities, fighting for children's healthcare as first lady, affordable childcare in the Senate.

We teach our kids the value of being a team player, which is what Hillary exemplified when she lost the 2008 election and actually agreed to work for her opponent as our secretary of state - earning sky-high approval ratings serving her country once again.

We also teach our kids that you don't take shortcuts in life, and you strive for meaningful success in whatever job you do. Well, Hillary has been a lawyer, a law professor, first lady of Arkansas, first lady of the United States, a US senator, secretary of state. And she has been successful in every role, gaining more experience and exposure to the presidency than any candidate in our lifetime - more than Barack, more than Bill. And, yes, she happens to be a woman.

And finally, we teach our kids that when you hit challenges in life, you don't give up, you stick with it. Well, during her four years as secretary of state alone, Hillary has faced her share of challenges. She's traveled to 112 countries, negotiated a ceasefire, a peace agreement, a release of dissidents. She spent 11 hours testifying before a congressional committee. We know that when things get tough, Hillary doesn't complain. She doesn't blame others. She doesn't abandon ship for something easier. No, Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life.

So in Hillary, we have a candidate who has dedicated her life to public service, someone who has waited her turn and helped out while waiting. She is an outstanding mother. She has raised a phenomenal young woman. She is a loving, loyal wife. She's a devoted daughter who cared for her mother until her final days. And if any of us had raised a daughter like Hillary Clinton, we would be so proud. We would be proud.

And regardless of who her opponent might be, no one could be more qualified for this job than Hillary - no one. And in this election, if we turn away from her, if we just stand by and allow her opponent to be elected, then what are we teaching our children about the values they should hold, about the kind of life they should lead? What are we saying?

In our hearts, we all know that if we let Hillary's opponent win this election, then we are sending a clear message to our kids that everything they're seeing and hearing is perfectly OK. We are validating it. We are endorsing it. We're telling our sons that it's OK to humiliate women. We're telling our daughters that this is how they deserve to be treated. We're telling all our kids that bigotry and bullying are perfectly acceptable in the leader of their country. Is that what we want for our children?

And remember, we won't just be setting a bad example for our kids, but for our entire world. Because for so long, America has been a model for countries across the globe, pushing them to educate their girls, insisting that they give more rights to their women. But if we have a president who routinely degrades women, who brags about sexually assaulting women, then how can we maintain our moral authority in the world? How can we continue to be a beacon of freedom and justice and human dignity?

Well, fortunately, New Hampshire, here's the beauty: we have everything we need to stop this madness. You see, while our mothers and grandmothers were often powerless to change their circumstances, today, we as women have all the power we need to determine the outcome of this election.

We have knowledge. We have a voice. We have a vote. And on November the 8th, we as women, we as Americans, we as decent human beings can come together and declare that enough is enough, and we do not tolerate this kind of behavior in this country.

Remember this: in 2012, women's votes were the difference between Barack winning and losing in key swing states, including right here in New Hampshire. So for anyone who might be thinking that your one vote doesn't really matter, or that one person can't really make a difference, consider this: back in 2012, Barack won New Hampshire by about 40,000 votes, which sounds like a lot. But when you break that number down, the difference between winning and losing this state was only 66 votes per precinct. Just take that in. If 66 people in each precinct had gone the other way, Barack would have lost.

So each of you right here today could help swing an entire precinct and win this election for Hillary just by getting yourselves, your families, and your friends and neighbors out to vote. You can do it right here. But you could also help swing an entire precinct for Hillary's opponent with a protest vote or by staying home out of frustration.

Because here's the truth: either Hillary Clinton or her opponent will be elected president this year. And if you vote for someone other than Hillary, or if you don't vote at all, then you are helping to elect her opponent. And just think about how you will feel if that happens. Imagine waking up on November the 9th and looking into the eyes of your daughter or son, or looking into your own eyes as you stare into the mirror. Imagine how you'll feel if you stayed home, or if you didn't do everything possible to elect Hillary.

We simply cannot let that happen. We cannot allow ourselves to be so disgusted that we just shut off the TV and walk away. And we can't just sit around wringing our hands. Now, we need to recover from our shock and depression and do what women have always done in this country. We need you to roll up your sleeves. We need to get to work. Because remember this: When they go low, we go ...

Audience: High!

Yes, we do.

And voting ourselves is a great start, but we also have to step up and start organizing. So we need you to make calls and knock on doors and get folks to the polls on election day and sign up to volunteer with one of the Hillary campaign folks who are here today just waiting for you to step up.

And, young people and not-so-young people, get on social media. Share your own story of why this election matters, why it should matter for all people of conscience in this country. There is so much at stake in this election.

See, the choice you make November 8 could determine whether we have a president who treats people with respect - or not. A president who will fight for kids, for good schools, for good jobs for our families - or not. A president who thinks that women deserve the right to make our own choices about our bodies and our health - or not. That's just a little bit of what's at stake.

So we cannot afford to be tired or turned off. And we cannot afford to stay home on election day. Because on November the 8th, we have the power to show our children that America's greatness comes from recognizing the innate dignity and worth of all our people. On November the 8th, we can show our children that this country is big enough to have a place for us all - men and women, folks of every background and walk of life - and that each of us is a precious part of this great American story, and we are always stronger together.

On November 8, we can show our children that here in America, we reject hatred and fear and in difficult times, we don't discard our highest ideals. No, we rise up to meet them. We rise up to perfect our union. We rise up to defend our blessings of liberty. We rise up to embody the values of equality and opportunity and sacrifice that have always made this country the greatest nation on Earth.

That is who we are. And don't ever let anyone tell you differently. Hope is important. Hope is important for our young people. And we deserve a president who can see those truths in us - a president who can bring us together and bring out the very best in us. Hillary Clinton will be that president.

So for the next 26 days, we need to do everything we can to help her and Tim Kaine win this election. I know I'm going to be doing it. Are you with me? Are you all with me? You ready to roll up your sleeves? Get to work knocking on doors?

All right, let's get to work. Thank you all. God bless.
This transcript was released by the White House Office of the First Lady

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The full transcript of Michelle Obama's powerful New Hampshire speech

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The first lady delivered an impassioned diatribe against Donald Trump and the 'hurtful, hateful language of women' heard throughout the election campaign

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Why does everyone in Star Wars speak English?

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Why does everyone in Star Wars speak English?

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Listen to how Idris Elba explains his opinions on diversity.

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Listen to how Idris Elba explains his opinions on diversity.

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Idris Elba: Speech on diversity in the media and films

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One of the country's leading actors - Idris Elba - has said that the UK "the most successful, diverse, multi-cultural country on the earth". But the star of "Luther" and "The Wire" said there was one problem - you couldn't tell that by what appears on our television screens.

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Have you ever noticed how people talk about football?

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Have you ever noticed how people talk about football?

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Football has developed a voracious appetite for stealing, commandeering and recycling phrases from elsewhere for its own (invariably clumsy) purposes. The game possesses a surprising number of obsolete words that originated elsewhere but still flourish here. It doesn't require much sticking out of the neck to suggest that most football fans wouldn't use stalwart, profligate, adjudged, diminutive or the verbal form of rifle if those words hadn't been given a new lease of life in their adopted sporting context. Nor would they ever describe something being done with aplomb, while only the engineers among us could identify a real-life slide rule.

While breathless broadcasting is responsible for the more questionable and ham-fisted football clichés, the printed word is where the more refined part of the football vernacular has slowly been allowed to mature over generations. Millions of match reports have had to find a variety of ways to describe goals, horror tackles and emphatic victories. However, just as a co-commentator must hurriedly cobble together a coherent sentence, newspaper editors have to work within strict limits on their back pages. Economy of space has promoted the use of certain words that are ubiquitous in tabloid headlines in particular, but which you could never say out loud with a straight face (unless you're a Sky Sports News presenter).

Footballers love to be in the headlines, unless it's for all the wrong reasons. In an era when pretty much anything players do, on or off the pitch, is liable to be shoehorned into a red-top or internet headline, the football media has developed a set of space-saving keywords (mostly of no more than three to five letters) that account for any incident:

Ace
Where better to start than with the ace? Despite its elite connotations, aceness is a conveniently fluid concept in the world of newspaper headlines. Premier League youth-teamers convicted of driving offences or League Two players caught in compromising situations in hotels qualify as aces on the basis of sensationalism alone, to the point where using the word to describe those genuinely at the pinnacle of the game seems woefully insufficient.
Axe
The most excruciating wait to be put out of one's misery is when a beleaguered manager (or boss, for these purposes) faces the axe. In the interests of pedantry, it should be emphasised that managers are never ultimately hit by the axe, they are simply axed. It can also be used to describe players being dropped from the squad - not only are they axed, but they are also frozen out. It's a cruel world.
Bid
Normally associated with proposed transfer deals, bid can also appear as a synonym for a team's efforts to achieve a season-long goal (such as the league title), but without quite the focused determination of a vow.
Blast
A vitriolic burst of criticism, with various possible sources or targets - often a poor, defenceless referee.
Blow
A disappointing event, invariably associated with injuries. The hammer blow, however, is exclusive to title bids.
Boost
The polar opposite of a blow.
Coy
"Tight-lipped" managers remain coy when asked about new signings - talking about players at other clubs (like talking about referees) is something managers go out of their way to say they don't do while still actually doing it anyway.
Dent
A type of blow, but one that only affects a bid or someone's hopes and rarely terminal (unlike, say, a hammer blow or a derailing).
Eye
Eyeing is the more voyeuristic equivalent of keeping tabs on a player, before mulling over a bid.
Exit
The departure from a cup competition. If the circumstances are calamitous enough, clubs can also crash out of a cup, or even be unceremoniously dumped out. Any of which may usher their manager towards the exit door.
Faces
After a controversial incident, but before its punishment is meted out, the accused player or club (or soon-to-be-axed manager) will be held in the purgatory of simply facing their fate.
Hails

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Steve Bruce, in 1985, holding up a report in which he is hailed. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Getty Images

Victorious managers feel compelled to hail a collective or individual performance, or the vocal support of the (no doubt magnificent) fans.
Held
Form-book defying stalemates usually involve a frustrated side being held. Sufficiently vague for use with any type of draw, regardless of who scored first or if it was a 0-0 stalemate.
Hit
After facing an FA probe and taking the subsequent rap, the miscreant can then be hit with a fine (or, indeed, slapped with a ban). Also used as shorthand for impressive goalscoring feats ('Ronaldo hits four in Real rout') or specifically sized capitulations ('Droylsden hit for six').
Jibe
The traditionally sneaky opening move in a bout of mind games, which can escalate to a war of words.
Joy
Exploiting its diminutive stature to the full, joy is the weapon of choice to describe a manager's/player's happiness.
Probe
The expected preliminary investigations of the FA (or, in more extreme cases, the police) which are invariably faced before they are launched.
Raid
The act of managers returning to recent former employers to cherry-pick their favourite players, ideally in one single deal. Suggests a certain cynicism from the bidding club, and a level of helplessness on the part of the seller.
Rap
A cult favourite, this diminutive word is far catchier than 'disciplinary proceedings'. An FA probe inevitably leads to an FA rap, two headline-friendly terms that cannot help but conjure up images rather different to their intended meaning. Such disciplinary proceedings attempt to bring closure to an ongoing row of some sort, be it a mere war of words or a full-blown, I'd-rather-be-punched-in-the-face spit-spat. Even the most serious issues such as race rows are effectively trivialised for the purposes of alliteration.
Seal
The rubber-stamping of a transfer deal (protracted or otherwise) or the relatively untroubled progression of a club to the next round of a cup competition.
Set for
Similar to facing something, but without the ominous threat, clubs tend to be set for cup draws, while players patiently find themselves set for a move elsewhere.
Sorry
The equivalent of beleaguered for clubs who have capitulated and been very heavily defeated.
Stun
Late or unexpected winning goals have the tendency to stun, particularly if Goliath ever faces a tricky trip to face David in the FA Cup.
Switch
A swiftly completed move, unfettered by any prolonged haggling or red tape.
Swoop
Similar to a raid, if rather less exciting and more smoothly completed, it again refers to a bigger club signing a player from a smaller club. These can often be bulk purchases, neatly described as double or triple swoops.
Vow
Nobody in football promises to do anything, they always vow - silencing the boo-boys is a common vow, as is a player's repaying of a manager's faith.

Emphatic scorelines also lend themselves to catchy headlines involving vaguely familiar phrases of unclear origin. The fun begins at around the four-goal mark, with a handy hotel-rating analogy:

Four goals = FOUR-STAR
Five goals = FIVE-STAR
Six goals = JOY OF SIX/HIT FOR SIX/SIX OF THE BEST
Seven goals = SEVENTH HEAVEN/SEVEN-UP
Eight goals = (no cliché allocated, although GR-8 is making a spirited, if clumsy, attempt to establish itself in recent seasons)
Nine goals = CLOUD NINE

Naturally, we all want to know who the protagonists are in the latest football pantomime, so desperate red-top headline writers can be seen to resort to painful, puzzling abbreviations such as MOU, WENG or the punned-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life ROO. You won't have to look too hard in tomorrow's papers to find these three- and four-letter codewords and, once you've started spotting them, the more ridiculous they will start to look. Unless the FA's disciplinary panel really are spitting sick rhymes from an orbiting space module.

Elsewhere, football's surprisingly subtle relationship with grammar bears curious fruit. While the animal world enjoys an innumerable complement of collective nouns, ranging from the wonderfully alliterative to the impenetrably obscure, you may not be surprised to learn that football has quite a few of its own. For reasons of sensationalism, laziness, inaccuracy or simply diversity, football coverage has demanded that a selection of collective nouns be made available, to be drawn from whenever appropriate. The list covers all aspects of the game and leaves us in no doubt (despite the lack of cold, hard numbers) of how one should pluralise the subjects in question:

Raft of substitutions
The sole domain of largely meaningless international friendlies, where the second half becomes fragmented by the experimentation of both coaches as they seek to give debuts to their one-cap wonders. Such games have a tendency to peter out until someone finally, inevitably, asks: "What have we learned?"
Host of opportunities
Hosts tend to be fairly undesirable collections of missed opportunities or absentees from the first team.
String of chances
Chances may arrive in strings, as can a goalkeeper's saves or a player's impressive performances. Deviating slightly from the grammatical theme, teams will also aim to string some wins together or, at the very least, two or three passes.
Brace
A pair of goals for a player in one game, although simply the word brace alone is now sufficient, as nothing else football-related arrives in that form. Braces can be quickfire in nature, but leave the goalscorer vulnerable to be substituted before he can complete his hat-trick.
Flurry of yellow cards
Card-happy referees can sometimes end a barren first half-hour or so by unleashing a flurry of yellow cards in quick succession. They will seek to justify this sudden outburst of disciplinarianism by pointing out various areas of the pitch to bemused perpetrators of persistent fouling.
Hatful of chances
A more flamboyant exaggeration, used to ridicule the striker that has missed these chances, some of which may have been gilt-edged. This represents one of the more imprecise units of measurement in football, as there seems to be no official confirmation of the volume of an average hat. Confusingly, though, while the misfiring hitman can fill a hat with squandered opportunities, he can also successfully score a hatful. Or, indeed, fill his boots.
Run of victories
Similar to a string of wins, but tends to be more smoothly and less desperately put together and, therefore, more suited to a march towards the title rather than a Great Escape from relegation.
Array of talent
Most commonly found at major tournaments or on expensively assembled substitute benches, but can also arrive on a club's youthful conveyor belt. The elite clubs, however, often boast a galaxy of stars.
Mass of bodies
Generally located somewhere in the midst of an almighty penalty-area scramble, a mass of bodies can be the reason for a statuesque goalkeeper being unsighted as a strike from all of 30 yards flies through a forest of legs and into the net. Elsewhere on the pitch, high-pressing teams coordinate their considerable efforts to form a swarm of [insert colour here] shirts to win back precious possession.
Embarrassment of riches
To further emphasise the options a manager has at his disposal, the international caps and transfer fees of his substitutes are gleefully totted up to illustrate his embarrassment of riches, often (rather aptly) while they are being humbled by a side who were assembled for the price of a four-bedroom house.
Glut of goals
A goal glut can occur in a specific competition, particularly a weekend of league fixtures in a single division. We will be excitedly told how many goals flew in during the 10 or so matches, leaving us to do the maths ourselves to decide if that is actually impressive or not.
Catalogue of errors
The helpful football media dutifully compile these to shame hapless individual players at a later date. Alternatively, unfortunate players may wish to browse their catalogue of injuries after they've been forced to hang up their boots. It's not just disappointments that are figuratively documented, though - scorers of great goals invariably have a scrapbook to keep them in.
Series of high-profile gaffes
A more focused and specific offshoot of the catalogue of errors, a series of high-profile gaffes tends to be more easily attributed to goalkeepers. The series of high-profile gaffes becomes so because Sky Sports News insist on endlessly looping footage of its contents.
Football Clichés by Adam Hurrey is now available in paperback

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Football has developed a voracious appetite for stealing, commandeering and recycling phrases from elsewhere for its own (invariably clumsy) purposes. The game possesses a surprising number of obsolete words that originated elsewhere but still flourish here.

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What will English Language look like in the future?

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What will English Language look like in the future?

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Sentence structures and other grammar based lessons.

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Sentence structures and other grammar based lessons.

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English Grammar 101 - Sentence Structure

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Learn more about sentence structure with our online grammar lessons. Our website makes a great companion to language arts classes, homeschooling, and ESL courses.

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The words we laugh at and the ones that annoy us.

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Comedy is simple. Just give an egghead a tinkle, get them to waddle over to play some bebop on a twerp's ass, and you've got yourself a laugh riot. Psychologists at the University of Warwick recently asked 800 people to rate 5,000 word on which were the most inherently comic. They include the aforementioned "waddle", "bebop", "twerp", "ass", "tinkle" and "egghead" (imagine, a man with an egg for a head!). Less predictably, it turns out that men and women find different words funny: "buzzard" and "czar" make the male charts, as do sex words such as "orgy" and "bondage". Women - those demure little puddings - prefer "giggle" or "sweat". If those are the words that make us puncture lumbar regions with guffaws, what about their opposites: those words that make the heart sink? Well, we can think of a few.

Dunkirk Hot take incoming. Could it be Brexit-themed?

Bae Definition of the sort of neologism you probably should have looked up by now, but somehow could never be arsed. You secretly suspect that even if you did, the meaning would simply glide past the eyes in a seizure of inanity.

Gamification The new "new paradigm", can be hosed over just about anything techy to imply that "stuff happens". Usage at a party indicates the speaker is about to open the bidding on a TED talk for one.

Schrödinger Salutation for the still-birth of a comedic analogy. See also: its higher-grade cousin Heisenberg Uncertainty.

Dying, dead Something 6.3 amusing has just happened on the internet.

Millennial The starting gun on the tedious inter-generational parlour game "Who is going to pay for my house?"

Brave This once involved wrestling bears but now mainly involves posting a picture of yourself looking post-baby flabby in your scants.

Woke Confusingly, still being used genuinely in some communities even though it has become such a passé piece of satire that it's disappearing from others.

Thinkpiece Oh right, you've decided to think in this one?

Quirky Trans: "Didn't really get it".

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From bae to millennial, 11 words that make the heart sink

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Comedy is simple. Just give an egghead a tinkle, get them to waddle over to play some bebop on a twerp's ass, and you've got yourself a laugh riot. Psychologists at the University of Warwick recently asked 800 people to rate 5,000 word on which were the most inherently comic.

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A great read!

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Have you heard the story of the man who was killed by the definite article? That may sound like the beginning of a linguistics joke, but sad to say, it actually happened.

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me," as the old adage goes. When battling bullies, we may take heart in this childhood rhyme, but the truth is, language can be more dangerous than we often assume-it can kill.

In later life, we grow more familiar with another, darker side of language, some flavor of "anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence against you." There's a reason there's a right to silence in many jurisdictions, given how loosely the law, often oblivious to the pitfalls of forensic linguistics, can interpret language as evidence.

One cold January morning in 1953, Derek Bentley, a nineteen-year-old, barely literate youth in the wrong place with the wrong words, was hanged for a murder he did not commit. During an attempted burglary a couple of months earlier, a policeman had been fatally shot by Bentley's sixteen-year-old friend Christopher Craig, a minor who legally could not be sentenced to death. Derek Bentley, who never held the gun, was held to blame for the crime.

Bentley was said to have called out "Let him have it, Chris!" Did these words mean, literally, "give him the gun" or, indirectly, "shoot him"?

The evidence hinged upon an ambiguous sentence. No one could agree on what it meant. When the police demanded Craig hand over the gun, Bentley was said to have called out "Let him have it, Chris!" after which Craig shot and killed a policeman. Did these words mean, literally, "give him the gun" or, indirectly, "shoot him"? Was Bentley a party to murder, as the prosecution would have it, by inciting Craig to kill?

Indirect speech can have a profoundly direct effect on listeners. Most recently, former FBI director James Comey stated he took Trump's statement "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go" as an obvious directive. In his testimony, Comey referenced one of history's most famous examples of a fatally effective indirect speech act, in which Henry II was said to have exasperatedly uttered "will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" Whereupon, four of his knights set out to assassinate the troublesome Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Beckett.

So how could we possibly know what Bentley, who was described as "borderline feeble-minded," meant to say? In Malcolm Coulthard's forensic linguistic analysis of the case, two preconditions for Bentley's guilt were laid out: it had to be proven that Bentley already knew Craig had a gun, and that he had instigated Craig to use it. According to Coulthard, the evidence that finally convinced the presiding judge and convicted Bentley was largely linguistic, based on the troubling police transcript of the statements Bentley had made.

A single word seemed to finally tip the balance: the definite article. In his statement, despite denying knowledge of any gun until Craig had used it, Derek Bentley had supposedly said "I did not know he was going to use the gun" at an earlier, crucial moment in the narrative. In summation, the judge made much of the word choice of " the gun" as opposed to " a gun," which to him showed that Bentley had known about the gun all along and his language had given him away. Thanks to this errant definite article, Bentley was thus considered an "unreliable witness" who did have prior knowledge of the gun and had contradicted himself by denying this later.

It took just two days for the jury to decide Bentley's fate and about a month later he was executed without reprieve. The unfortunate case of Derek Bentley is one of Britain's most notorious miscarriages of justice and shines a spotlight on just how fragile forensic linguistic evidence can be, and how prone it is to mistaken interpretations and manipulation by even the most well-meaning of people.

As we've seen, forensic linguistics can often provide the key lead in cold cases such as in the Unabomber mystery, enabling investigators to uncover much stronger corroborating evidence that can lead to a conviction as a result. But there's a danger of things going horribly wrong when slim linguistic evidence is the only thing standing between the accused and their innocence, especially when that evidence might interpreted carelessly out of context by those inexperienced in forensic linguistic techniques, including judges, lawyers, investigators, and even so-called expert witnesses.

The popularity of police dramas has led a wide audience to believe that DNA evidence is rarely wrong. The reality is that even DNA testing can be flawed, and forensic linguistic evidence is perhaps even more precarious in what it can tell us. But the idea of linguistic fingerprints is compelling. While DNA testing is somewhat out of the average person's reach, forensic linguistic analysis seems readily accessible. Our native familiarity with language, along with a society's linguistic baggage and beliefs, can often lead us to think we're competent enough to judge the simple cause and effect of what language reveals about a person's identity or intentions. The attraction of this kind of linguistic armchair detective work is it presents problems as safe and controlled puzzles to be solved using knowledge you apparently already have, innately. But life is not a clear-cut whodunnit and answers to mysteries are rarely so simple.

English professor Don Foster may style himself a literary detective, but is an oft-cited cautionary tale of how even those who work in language can make major errors when dabbling in linguistic mysteries and criminal cases such as uncovering an author's identity, without training or experience in forensic linguistics. Foster had once successfully used his simple literary techniques on author identification, based on word count coincidences, to determine who the anonymous author of the novel Primary Colors was in the late 1990s, given earlier leads that had been put forward by others. When it comes to true crimes and other cases of unknown identity, however, those same rudimentary techniques can result in distressing and wrongful accusations.

Retained as an expert linguistic witness in famous cases such as the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, Foster had accused Patsy Ramsey, the victim's mother, of writing the crucial ransom note. Using those same techniques prior to his collaboration with Boulder police, Foster had also declared her innocence, believing that the crime had been committed by someone he had communicated with on the internet based on their language use. Similarly, the highly publicized 2001 anthrax case led Foster to wrongfully point the finger at bioweapons expert Steven Hatfill in a Vanity Fair article, destroying his career, and resulting in Hatfill suing Foster and Vanity Fair. Foster later went on to disastrously ruin writer Sarah Champion's reputation by unmasking her as London's most notoriously anonymous call girl blogger Belle du Jour, by counting her commas ( later revealed to be scientist Dr Brooke Magnanti).

The reality is linguistic evidence can be highly problematic when looked at in isolation but can be even more so when you take our social and political assumptions about language into account. In the Derek Bentley case, the linguistic evidence of a handful of sentences from the police transcript, a so-called verbatim record, generated so much heated debate back and forth by lawyers and judges over what Bentley could have really intended that, as linguist Coulthard and others have pointed out, a major twist to the story was completely overlooked.

Bentley had steadfastly denied that he'd ever said the sentences that led to his wrongful conviction, either those words verbatim or the sequence in which they were presented. Between a police record, which three officers swore was the result of an unassisted monologue, and the accused, an illiterate man with a history of developmental problems, who should be believed? It's one thing for a judge or lawyer to sway a jury with a particular interpretation of linguistic evidence, but what happens when the supposedly neutral linguistic evidence itself is unreliable?

The act of transcribing an interaction itself is political.

We may often believe that transcripts are a true, neutral, straightforward account of verbal interaction. In the absence of recorded speech, they are often all we have to go on, so without thinking, we take them as written. But how reliable are they? You may have heard of the term "verballing," which refers to false verbal evidence made up by the police, which supposedly is kept in check by audio and video recordings. Even without considering this possibility, it turns out just the act of transcribing speech can fraught with difficulties.

Numerous studies have shown how transcripts are not as objective and reliable as we imagine. For one thing, listening to recordings or taking down live speech can already be perceptually problematic. Studies have shown that listeners can fill in missing speech sounds and that depending on their background, may even "restore" speech sounds differently. So it seems that listeners, in some cases, can just hear what they want to hear.

The act of transcribing an interaction itself is political -power lies in the hands of those who create the transcript, even without intentional fabrication, and often involves an element of interpretative choices that can affect how the information is seen by others. Take a simple example-if a non-native speaker or a speaker with a stigmatized dialect is transcribed with a kind of eye dialect or vernacular variants that's marked from the standard form, readers may develop a certain perception of that speaker depending on their social biases. How a speaker is represented in the transcript can be problematic when it comes to legal cases that depend heavily on the language contained in transcripts.

In his analysis of the discourse between Bentley and the police, Coulthard shows that what was presented by the police as a true and verbatim monologue record contained discourse markers of a concealed dialogue. When a speaker suddenly volunteers negative sentences with no "narrative justification" such as "up until then, Chris had not said anything," and "I did not know he was going to use the gun," in a transcript, it suggests it's in answer to an invisible leading question. It alters the incriminating perception of Bentley's statement considerably, because the definite article could very well have been in answer to "a gun" introduced by the concealed question, rather than volunteered spontaneously by Bentley.

In fact, Bentley's denial that he'd ever said "Let him have it, Chris" was supported the the testimony of both Craig and a fourth officer at the scene who had never been called upon as a witness. It took his family some forty years of dedication before Bentley was pardoned and exonerated, in 1998, of a murder he did not commit.

All this to say, while forensic linguistics can certainly shine a light in the darkest of cases, in the wrong hands, linguistic evidence can be fatally flawed.

JSTOR Citations

By: Judith Green, Maria Franquiz and Carol Dixon

TESOL Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Spring, 1997), pp. 172-176

Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)

By: Roger W. Shuy

Discourse & Society, Vol. 6, No. 2 (1995), pp. 207-222

Sage Publications, Ltd.

By: Richard M. Warren

Science, New Series, Vol. 167, No. 3917 (Jan. 23, 1970), pp. 392-393

American Association for the Advancement of Science

By: Peter Tiersma and Lawrence M. Solan

Language, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Jun., 2002), pp. 221-239

Linguistic Society of America

By: Boaz Sangero and Mordechai Halpert

Jurimetrics, Vol. 48, No. 1 (FALL 2007), pp. 43-94

American Bar Association

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Sentenced to Death (and Other Tales from the Dark Side of Language) | JSTOR Daily

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Have you heard the story of the man who was killed by the definite article? That may sound like the beginning of a linguistics joke, but sad to say, it actually happened. "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me," as the old adage goes.

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Language is never a register of completely stable meaning

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Sales of George Orwell's 1984 have apparently surged since Kellyanne Conway introduced the phrase "alternative facts" into public discourse.

For many, the term is reminiscent of Orwell's dystopian Newspeak, the imaginary language used by the novel's totalitarian government to control the way the population thinks. It also allows for the doublethink of the slogans "War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery", and "Ignorance is Strength" that also feature in the book. But while Newspeak is fiction, there's at least an element of truth to the way it shows how meaning is shaped.

Language is never a register of completely stable meaning. Words are always slippery, always open to manipulation. We may mock how blatant Conway is in her manipulation, but disputing the meanings of words is always part of political debate.

In disagreements over linguistic meaning, a usual first move is to consult the dictionary. As the lexicography scholar Howard Jackson wrote: "We all take what the dictionary says as authoritative: if the dictionary says so, then it is so."

But this is built on a flawed conception both of what a dictionary is - and what language is. The dictionary is one of those concepts, like the Bible, which gets talked about as if there were a single canonical version. In the same way, this platonic ideal of the dictionary is seen as the most accurate record of a language. When people complain, for example, that such-and-such a word isn't in the dictionary, they're questioning the legitimacy of that word and suggesting that it isn't a proper part of the language.

In actual fact, of course, there is no one dictionary. There are multiple versions, each of which includes a slightly different set of words, which are defined in slightly different ways. This has always been the case. Early lexicographers such as Dr Samuel Johnson and Pierre Larousse may have aimed at objectivity, but a certain subjectivity still crept into their work. A famous example is Johnson's definition of "oats" which manages to include a very non-objective sideswipe at his northern neighbours: "Grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."

This subjectivity simply reflects the fact that the meanings of words aren't absolute constants - that definitions stem from the way language is used. This not only changes over time, but can be contested and fought over. Take the word "theory" for example. For some it means a generalised scientific explanation of phenomena in the world. For others it's a mere guess at how the world might work.

The internet, with its pluralism and user-based authorship, brings this clearly into focus. There's an active online community dedicated to documenting and discussing vocabulary, one of the most popular examples of which is Urban Dictionary. Started in 1999 by Aaron Peckham, the idea behind this is to record ephemeral and everyday spoken language, submitted by users, and to give definitions which are explicitly meant to be personal rather than standardised.

As Peckham says: "Most dictionaries are objective. Urban Dictionary is completely subjective. It's not presented as fact, [but] as opinions." The opinion-led nature of the definitions means that it can be used as an arena for political debate. Here, for example, are two entries for the word "Obamacare".

"A term invented by impoverished, dumb-ass neocons to apply negative connotation to the bi-partisan, congressional healthcare plan."

And: "Also known as socialism. giving all Americans cheap bull shit healthcare. A plan to destroy the quality of healthcare."

All of which brings us to a recent initiative by the website AllSides. As part of their educational remit of exposing bias in the media, they have produced a short dictionary which presents definitions of a number of terms - including "facts", "power" and "truth" - which often provoke controversy and end up meaning starkly different things to different people.

Their definitions offer perspectives from opposing sides of the political spectrum with the aim being to flag up that "until we understand what a term means to others, we don't know the issue and can't effectively communicate". The project foregrounds the possibility of subjectivity in the meaning of words - not in the improvised way that Urban Dictionary does, but with greater explicitness than a "traditional" dictionary does.

Acknowledging subjectivity and pluralism isn't to imply that linguistic meaning is a free-for-all. Like Humpty Dumpty in Alice Through the Looking Glass, we can use a word to mean whatever we choose it to mean. Language has the ability to be surprisingly stable, despite its constant evolution and endless variety. But what it does point to is the way that meaning also resides in dialogue and negotiation with other people. That meaning a mixture of both evidence and, importantly, persuasion - which is why it can be so politically charged.
Philip Seargeant is a senior lecturer in applied linguistics at the Open University. This article first appeared on The Conversation (theconversation.com)
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The truth and 'alternative facts': Language is always subject to change

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Sales of George Orwell's 1984 have apparently surged since Kellyanne Conway introduced the phrase "alternative facts" into public discourse. For many, the term is reminiscent of Orwell's dystopian Newspeak, the imaginary language used by the novel's totalitarian government to control the way the population thinks.

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The go' to' place for linguists

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Oxford Languages | The Home of Language Data

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Explore Oxford Languages, the home of world-renowned language data.

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Infographic: How a Word Gets Into the Dictionary

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What kind of non-fiction writers do you like?

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What kind of non-fiction writers do you like?

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Ms Hart enjoys reading articles written Caitlin Moran, David Mitchell, Charlie Brooker, Victoria Mitchell Coren, Louis Theroux, David Crystal.

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Caitlin Moran offers posthumous advice to her daughter

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Here's one we missed earlier: journalist Caitlin Moran's draft last letter to her daughter published in The Times in July of last year (remember 2013?). You can find the entire article (£) here.

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Heaps of brilliant articles about language in use.

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Mind your language | Media | The Guardian

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The editors of the Guardian style guide write about language usage and abusage

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Check out the word of the day...every day!

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January 18th is celebrated as Thesaurus Day to honor the birthday of the author of the first thesaurus, Peter Mark Roget. Get into the spirit by reading our two-part interview with Roget biographer Joshua Kendall here and here. Also check out an ode to the thesaurus penned by Franklin P. Adams here and Johnny Carson's hilarious "Funeral for a Thesaurus Editor" sketch here.

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Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus - An online thesaurus and dictionary of over 145,000 words that you explore using an interactive map.

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An online thesaurus and dictionary of over 145,000 words that you explore using an interactive map. It's a tool for people who think visually. The most fun you've ever had with words. The Visual Thesaurus was built using Thinkmap, a data visualization technology.

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Quick tests of your word class and sentence structure knowledge.

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Quick tests of your word class and sentence structure knowledge.

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Go on...try it!

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NOUNS

DETERMINERS

Minor Word Classes p3: Uses of ItIn each of the following sentences, indicate whether the highlighted word is pronoun it, dummy it, or anticipatory it.

CLAUSES AND SENTENCES
FUNCTIONS IN PHRASES

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Survey of English Usage, University College London

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List of Exercises in the Internet Grammar of English

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NOUNS DETERMINERS Minor Word Classes p3: Uses of It In each of the following sentences, indicate whether the highlighted word is pronoun it, dummy it, or anticipatory it. CLAUSES AND SENTENCES FUNCTIONS IN PHRASES

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How many can you do?

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What's not to love?

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search our site Grammarly's app will help with: (1) Avoiding spelling errors (2) Correcting grammar errors (3) Finding better words (This free browser extension works with webmail, social media, and texting apps as well as online forms and Microsoft Office documents, like Word and Teams.) download the app SATs Questions Quick Test Fun!

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If you need to check out key terms and make sure you have the right understanding...

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Level Up -- A-level revision to help you level up your grades.

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Full stops: when to stop using them in texts.

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Full stops: when to stop using them in texts.

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Have you ever watched parents try to text with their children? One hilarious type of misunderstanding goes like this:

Parent: I am waiting for you in the car.

Child: r u mad?

Parent: I am not mad.

Parent: I am telling you I am waiting.

Child: what?????

The poor mom or dad doesn't understand one of the cardinal rules of texting, which is that you don't use periods, period. Not unless you want to come off as cold, angry or passive-aggressive.

A trend piece in the New York Times on Friday touched on this fascinating development - which, incidentally, has been brewing for at least two decades, ever since kids were logging onto AOL Instant Messenger. The period is no longer how we finish our sentences. In texts and online chats, it has been replaced by the simple line break.

You just hit send

Your words end up on a new line

a visual indication

that you have started

a new sentence,

phrase,

clause,

or unit of meaning

Of course, this practice far predates the instant message. Poets have been using line breaks for basically forever. (In the right light, you might even say a text conversation has some of the same exuberant, associative, overlapping qualities of say, an e. e. cummings poem.) But we can credit the text and the IM for making the line break the default method of punctuation in the 21st century.

The period, meanwhile, has become the evil twin of the exclamation point. It's now an optional mark that adds emphasis - but a nasty, dour sort of emphasis. "It is not necessary to use a period in a text message, so to make something explicit that is already implicit makes a point of it," Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguist at the University of California at Berkeley, told the New York Times.

A few years ago, Ben Crair at the New Republic wrote a hilarious history of the period in age of instant messaging. "The period was always the humblest of punctuation marks," he began. "Recently, however, it's started getting angry." Crair noticed that in his text conversations, the period had stopped serving any grammatical purpose. Instead, it was mostly being used to express a certain tone or emotion. And that emotion was anger.

An antique manuscript (Public domain via Wikimedia commons)

The period has essentially become a stylistic device, which is a fascinating development because it recalls the freewheeling origins of Western punctuation.

Early Greek and Latin texts often lacked any kind of punctuation. They didn't even have spaces between the words. The reader just had to figure it out. Later on, punctuation and spacing were added to help guide novice readers.

There weren't many rules at first. Punctuation was largely an oratorical tool, a guide to help people read a text aloud. Scholars would mark down wherever they thought it would be good for the reader to take a breath, or to adjust the tone of their voice. They would also make marks where they anticipated that people might get confused, wherever that was in the text. They didn't end every sentence with punctuation if they thought the meaning was already clear.

For instance · medieval scribes often used something called the punctus · a dot that floated between words · The punctus was an all-purpose tool · It could separate complete sentences · functioning like a medieval period · It could also act like a comma · to separate different clauses within a sentence.

But the punctus was much more versatile than anything we have in modern written English. Scribes would liberally sprinkle punctus marks onto a sentence if they felt they would help readers understand better. Here's an example from a medieval math text, in which the author used punctus marks to cordon off words into basic groups. (I've attempted to modernize some of the Middle English spelling.)
Thes · ix figures and nowmbres · eche · rekenyd · by himself · is clepid numerus digitus These · nine figures and numbers · each · reckoned · by himself · is called numerical digits
This usage may seem weird, but we employ hyphens to accomplish a similar purpose today. "The medium green car" is an ambiguous phrase. Is the color medium-green, or is the car a medium-size car? Putting in a hyphen - "The medium-green car" - eliminates that confusion. In natural speech, we would distinguish between the two meaning by adding subtle pauses in different places. To convey the same information in medieval writing, a scribe could have grouped the words using punctus marks: "The · medium green · car."

With the invention of the printing press and the rise of mass publishing, both the punctuation and the spelling of written English quickly became standardized. People once had the freedum too spel wurds any wey they liked. Now there were rules for spelling.

Likewise, people created rules for punctuation. Punctuation reformers demanded that the marks be placed systematically, in accordance with the underlying structure of a sentence. You couldn't sprinkle in punctuation just for effect, as medieval scribes did. Punctuation began to serve more a grammatical function than a rhetorical one.

This remains a difficult concept for children, who instinctually use punctuation marks in writing like they use pauses in speech. But in spoken language, pauses are often stylistic, and the pauses don't always line up with the grammar of what we're saying. For instance, consider the following run-on sentence:
I love my cat, I can't be without her.
This is a non-grammatical use of the comma, but it conveys something important. You get a sense of enthusiasm. When we get excited, the pauses between our sentences shrink. We speak in run-ons. There are ways of notating this with modern punctuation. A period feels too weighty, but you could a semicolon or a dash:
I love my cat; I can't be without her. I love my cat - I can't be without her.
If you're texting, though, you have another option - the line break:
I love my cat I can't live without her
Linguists have noted that the kind of language that we employ in texts and instant messages is very similar to spoken speech; in this way, it bears resemblance to the early days of writing, when manuscripts closely followed how people actually spoke.

Recent trends in punctuation also hark back to that age, when people used punctuation in more liberal and creative ways. The modern line break is like the medieval punctus - an all-purpose piece of punctuation that inserts pauses wherever we're feeling it. And the period has gained expressive powers after it was laid off from its job marking the ends of sentences. Now it's an icy flourish we deploy against frenemies and exes.

We should celebrate these developments. Writing is becoming richer. This is an exciting time. Period.
Copyright: Washington Post
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Have you ever watched parents try to text with their children? One hilarious type of misunderstanding goes like this: Parent: I am waiting for you in the car. Child: r u mad? Parent: I am not mad. Parent: I am telling you I am waiting. Child: what?????

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Persuasive skills of today's politicians

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Persuasive skills of today's politicians

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Yes...even Donal Trump knows a thing or tow about rhetoric!

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What happens when political language fails? When the rage and incomprehension boil over, and we run out of a common vocabulary and sufficient trust in each other's words to be able to sit down and work through what unites and divides us? Don't expect much comfort from history. From the fall of Athens to the rise of totalitarianism, observers from Thucydides to George Orwell have associated a breakdown in public language - or rhetoric, to give it a more traditional name - with the failure of democracy, loss of freedom, civil strife and, ultimately, tyranny and murder.

We are children of the Enlightenment, brought up to believe that we must always dig below the surface to get at the truth, and that nothing could be more of the surface than rhetoric, that slap of paint politicians use to cover who knows what. No wonder we usually want to work back from deficiencies in the way we hear political ideas expressed to what we take to be more fundamental causes - ideology, group values and affinities, the major economic and social challenges of the day. But there have been periods, in both ancient and modern history, when observers have come to believe that the causality can flow in the opposite direction, and that it is when public language fails that politics as whole starts to fall apart.

So let's talk about 2016. In Britain, the ugly shambles that passed for a once-and-for-all national debate about our place in Europe. In the US, an official candidate for the presidency seemingly capable of any exaggeration or untruth - including wondering aloud if the US's gun owners couldn't do something to stop Hillary Clinton - but still retaining the support of tens of millions of voters. In continental Europe, the extremists gaining ground in many countries, the ultra-rightist Norbert Hofer within millimetres of the Austrian presidency, Marine Le Pen polling well in the run-up to next year's French presidential race. And almost everywhere - whether in the debating chamber, on prime time TV or the smartphone in your pocket - a sense of a public discourse that is losing its power to explain and reconcile, or indeed to express anything beyond hatred and division.

These trends have many social, economic and political causes, but public language - the language we use when we discuss politics or policy, or make our case in court, or try to persuade anyone of anything else in a public context - seems to me to be at the heart of the matter. Indeed, I believe we are living through what amounts to a crisis in public language.

Let's not make the mistake of confusing anti-rhetorical 'truth-telling' with actually telling the truth

The crisis is playing out in many ways, but perhaps the most important is the failure of conventional political rhetoric in almost every western country. The gap between the claims and promises of political leaders and the facts on the ground - about inequality, globalisation and the crash of 2008, about immigration, about the west's unhappy wars in the Middle East, and much else besides - became insupportably wide. As opinion polls in the US, UK, France and elsewhere demonstrate, many voters have simply stopped believing a word of it.

But the death of a political rhetoric is not like a royal succession, with the crown passing smoothly from one monarch to the next. We're living in a disputed interregnum, with many politicians refusing to accept that the old queen is dead and strange pretenders popping up everywhere - anti-politicians such as Beppe Grillo and Donald Trump, mavericks from within existing political structures such as Ted Cruz and Boris Johnson - each with their own rhetorical recipe for fame and glory.

Of course, the pretenders would deny that they were in the rhetoric business at all. If they mention the word, it is only in the context of the detested public language of the establishment. "If there's one thing I can't abide it's rhetoric," that Trump-before-the-fact Silvio Berlusconi once remarked. "I'm only interested in what needs to get done." Trump's own appeal depends more than anything on the belief that he is a truth-teller untainted by the lying ways of conventional politicians: early in the primary campaign, one representative Fox News poll found that 44% of a sample of US voters, and 62% of Republicans, agreed with the statement: "He tells it like it is, and we need that now in a president."

But let's not make the mistake of confusing anti-rhetorical "truth-telling" with actually telling the truth. One of the advantages of noisily rejecting any notion of rhetoric is that, once listeners are convinced you're not trying to deceive them in the manner of regular politicians, they may switch off the critical faculties they usually apply to political speech and forgive you any amount of exaggeration, contradiction or offensiveness. And, if rivals or the establishment media then point this out, your supporters may dismiss it as spin. Here is Florida voter Yolanda Esquivel, quoted by the BBC in November 2015, rejecting criticism of Trump for his outspokenness: "I'm looking at what candidates can do, not the picky little things they say that people want to make a big deal of."

Michael Gove's statement that "people in this country have had enough of experts" was a more fine-grained attack on the conventional rhetoric of the establishment. At first blush, it sounds like - and was immediately and bitterly condemned as - an attack on expertise as such. I see it rather as an attack on the sound of modern technocratic government, a claim that the public are sick and tired of we-know-best lectures from economists and others, lectures that are couched in impenetrable jargon and that, despite their weighty tone at the time, frequently turn out to be wrong.

The difficulty that ordinary voters have in making sense of the language of elite policymakers is a real issue. One Ipsos MORI survey identified what the researchers called a "presumption of complexity" on the part of many respondents, which meant they thought it was hopeless to even try to understand the issue in question. But is Gove's proposed solution to the problem to fire the experts en masse? It seems unlikely: in the education department and elsewhere Gove was a notably technocratic minister, steeped in data and expert advice. Is it rather to hang on to the technocrats, but to hide them from public view so that their complicated ideas no longer irritate non-expert listeners? That's scarcely a recipe for restoring public confidence. Or should we see his statement as a piece of instrumental rhetoric itself, a cynical way of rubbishing the legions of pro‑Remain economists while simultaneously presenting the speaker himself not as a paid-up member of that hated elite, but as one of those simple souls who prefers honest ignorance to the slipperiness and insufferable superiority of the overeducated?

Gove took care throughout the Brexit campaign to speak with more directness and less of qualification than is usual among senior British politicians. Asked on the same occasion whether he would stand to be Tory leader, he just said: "Count me out." It's hard to imagine anything clearer or more straightforward - a refreshingly candid response from a post-rhetorical politician. Within days, that statement was no longer "operative", to use the term coined by Nixon's press secretary Ron Ziegler. Clarity and straightforwardness are no guarantee that something is true.

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Illustration: Edward Carvalho-Monaghan for Review

Across the west, anti-politicians from outside the mainstream, and those mainstream politicians who hope to use some of the anti-politicians' populist mojo to advance themselves and their causes within conventional political structures, are trying to strike this "let's cut through the rhetoric" pose. But, whether or not they and their supporters are aware of it, anti-rhetoric is itself a classic move in the rhetorical game - indeed, in the right circumstances, it can be the most persuasive move of all. And, like any other form of public language, we can unpack it to find out what makes it tick. Here's Trump addressing a stadium of supporters in Dallas in September last year:

I made a beautiful speech. I thought it was wonderful. Everything was fine. A week and a half later, they attacked me. In other words they went through - and then they lied. They made it up. I'm talking about illegal immigration ... We have to stop illegal immigration. We have to do it. [Cheers and applause] We have to do it. Have to do it. [Audience: USA! USA! USA! USA!] And when I hear some of the people that I'm running against, including the Democrats, we have to build a wall, folks. We have to build a wall. All you have to do is go to Israel and say, 'How is your wall working?' Walls work.

All rhetoric is designed for a particular time and place, and above all for a particular audience

Those super-short sentences emphasise certainty and determination, but build up layer by layer towards a climax with a kind of emotional logic. It's a style that students of rhetoric call parataxis. This is the way generals and dictators have always spoken to distinguish themselves from the cavilling civilians they mean to sweep aside. Julius Caesar's famous summary, not of his invasion of Britain, but of his victory in the Battle of Zela - "Veni vidi vici", 'I came, I saw, I conquered' - is a classical example of parataxis. Today listeners are more likely to associate it with the successful entrepreneur or chief executive.

Trump's style of parataxis is almost infinitely compressible, as his intuitive mastery of the micro-rhetorical world of Twitter shows: "Lightweight Marco Rubio was working hard last night. The problem is he is a choker, and once a choker, always a chokker [sic]! Mr Meltdown."

"Lightweight", "choker", "Mr Meltdown" - this is personal in every sense of the word, and written personally on the spur of the moment or dictated in real time to a thick-fingered aide, if that last miskeyed "chokker" is anything to go by. But it contains no fewer than three different summaries of the Trump view of Senator Rubio, each of which is immediately and eminently retweetable. Twitter seems to have influenced Trump's set piece oratory as well; often he obsesses over a single word or a phrase, like someone feverishly circling something objectionable in a newspaper. Just a couple of weeks ago, he was accusing Barack Obama of creating Islamic State: "He's the founder of Isis. He's the founder of Isis. He's the founder. He founded Isis. I would say that the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton."

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Telling it 'like it is' ... Donald Trump in Austin, Texas. Photograph: Drew Anthony Smith/Getty Images

Does he actually mean it when he says things like this? Nodding to a concept in quantum mechanics, the Urban Dictionary defines a "Schrödinger's douchebag" as someone who makes an unacceptable remark and then waits to see the reaction before declaring retrospectively whether they meant it for real or were "just joking". But perhaps in Trump's case the indeterminacy is genuine, and the words just tumble out of his mouth without him even bothering to decide at the time whether they are to be taken at face value or as a sarcastic, fantastic throwaway.

The fluidity, the way the words follow a still-emerging train of thought, adds to the sense of spontaneity and candour. Perhaps because of that (and to the despair of many of those around him), he has so far largely refused to abandon this style of speaking in favour of prepared texts and the Teleprompter. In that Dallas speech, he starts an idea - "In other words they went through ... " - presumably intending to say something like, "They went through my speech and twisted what I said and presented it out of context." But this is exactly the kind of whiny complaint which conventional politicians make, so halfway through he drops it in favour of the far punchier "and then they lied". Isn't lying what these political and media enemies are all about? Cut to the chase. "And when I hear some of the people that I'm running against, including the Democrats", sounds as if we're about to get a paragraph attacking other would-be Republican nominees, or the Democratic contenders, or both. But Trump doesn't want to waste time pointing out the different ways in which Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are defective candidates. In fact he doesn't sound very interested in other candidates at all. So he simply leaves it out and jumps, mid-sentence, to the main thing on his mind: "we have to build a wall, folks".

The immoderation is calculated. Professional politicians have traditionally wanted to be viewed as wise counsellors; mastering the detail and carefully weighing up the options before making a policy proposal; at least seeming to listen to serious objections made to them by opponents. Trump speaks as if the truth and the right policies were blindingly obvious, and the so-called wise counsellors who claim that the world is a complex place, and that policymaking needs to take account of that complexity, are idiots or in somebody's pocket. Saying the "unsayable" is the clearest possible way of signalling this contrary stance. But for Trump, stamping on political correctness is not just effective positioning. He has found a wanton ecstasy in it, a joyous spasm of indignation in which supporters are only too happy to lose themselves.

A Schrödinger's douchebag makes an unacceptable remark and gauges the reaction before declaring whether they meant it

The Trump style eschews any kind of rhetorical cleverness. The shocking statements are not couched in witty or allusive language. His campaign slogan - Make America Great Again! - could hardly be less original or artful. Everything is intended to emphasise the break with the despised language of the men and women of the Washington machine. There is a wall between them and you, Trump seems to say to his audience, but I am on this side of the wall alongside you. They treat you as stupid, but you understand things far better than they do. The guarantee that I see the world as you do is the fact that I speak in your language, not theirs.

The British EU referendum campaign lacked the mad fireworks of the current US presidential cycle, but it too rapidly descended into wild exaggeration and insult, with the public looking on in palpable bewilderment. "What we really need is an end to the arms race of ever more lurid claims and counter-claims made by both sides on this," was the weary verdict of Treasury select committee chairman Andrew Tyrie MP in the days before the vote. "I think it's confusing the public, it's impoverishing political debate."

Yet clear rhetorical winners and losers still emerged. The Remain camp never found an emotionally compelling way of expressing the case for continued membership of the EU; there was no idealism nor even - at least from the most prominent leaders of the campaign - evidence of an iota of enthusiasm to put alongside the 10 plagues of Egypt with which they sought to scare off anyone contemplating departure. The Brexit messaging was both more chaotic and more irresponsible - Nigel Farage beaming in front of a poster depicting a sea of refugees worthy of Josef Goebbels himself, promises made during the campaign cheerfully revoked within hours of the votes coming in - yet the Leavers also found language with a power and cogency that eluded their adversaries. Take back control. Independence Day. Both these phrases offer the listener agency and at least the prospect of opportunity and hope. Dismissed as absurd, not just by the opposing politicians but by much of Britain, they nonetheless pushed Brexit over the top.

Perhaps you find this kind of phrase-making glib and repellent and are amazed that anyone could be taken in by it. Perhaps you regard the success of Trump's novel style of oratory as nothing more than final confirmation that many Americans have lost their wits. Yet all rhetoric is designed for a particular time and place, and above all for a particular audience - it is a supremely tactical, contextual art - and these words probably weren't intended for you. And you must accept that by the same token the public language that most persuades you, whether it's the fierce rhetoric of rights and inclusion or the measured rationality of evidence-based policymaking, and whether delivered with the soaring inspiration of the young Obama, the dogged persistence of a Bernie Sanders or a Jeremy Corbyn, or the authoritative and affectless calm of an Angela Merkel or a Theresa May, can ring every bit as hollow in other ears.

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Ukip leader Nigel Farage poses in front of a poster depicting refugees during the EU referendum. Photograph: Philip Toscano/PA

So how did we get here - and what, if anything, can we do to begin to put things right? I'm sceptical of any theory that is predicated on the wickedness or insanity of any one set of actors in this drama. It's easy to blame politicians and parties with whom you happen to disagree, but this doesn't account for the fact that similar changes are taking place in public discourse in radically different political cultures and across ideological polarities: the mainly leftwing critics of Andrew Lansley's attempt to

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From Trump to Brexit rhetoric: how today's politicians have got away with words

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What happens when political language fails? When the rage and incomprehension boil over, and we run out of a common vocabulary and sufficient trust in each other's words to be able to sit down and work through what unites and divides us? Don't expect much comfort from history.

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There's a magazine for everyone - even linguists!

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Babel is a new print and digital magazine all about language and linguistics. With Prof. David Crystal as Linguistic Advisor and Profs. Lesley Jeffries and Dan McIntyre as co-editors, it is written and compiled by world-class linguists. Nevertheless, it is aimed at a wide range of language-lovers, bringing cutting edge research in linguistics to our subscribers in an accessible and fun glossy magazine.

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Linguists call it collocation: the likelihood of two words occurring together. If I say "pop", your mental rolodex will begin whirring away, coming up with candidates for what might follow. "Music", "song" or "star", are highly likely. "Sensation" or "diva" a little less so. "Snorkel" very unlikely indeed.

What do you think of when I say the word "rabid"? One option, according to the dictionary publisher Oxford Dictionaries, is "feminist". The publisher has been criticised for a sexist bias in its illustrations of how certain words are used. "Nagging" is followed by "wife". "Grating" and "shrill" appear in sentences describing women's voices, not men's.

One of the points of Oxford Dictionaries, part of Oxford University Press (OUP), is to show how words are used in the real world. And that is their response to allegations of sexism. "The example sentences we use are taken from a huge variety of different sources and do not represent the views or opinions of Oxford University Press," they said in a statement.

In other words, it's not the dictionary that's sexist, it's the English-speaking world. Why choose "feminist" over, say, "rightwinger", "communist" or "fan", though? As if not quite convinced by its own explanation, the OUP is now "reviewing the example sentence for 'rabid' to ensure that it reflects current usage".

That can only be a good thing. But a word of warning: it might not deliver the answer you'd hope for. Perhaps "rabid" is collocated with "feminist" more often than with those other words (if the data the OUP uses includes online discussions, I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case). Sexist assumptions find their way into speech and writing for the simple reason that society is still sexist.

Language, as the medium through which we conduct almost all relationships, public and private, bears the precise imprint of our cultural attitudes. The history of language, then, is like a fossil record of how those attitudes have evolved, or how stubbornly they have stayed the same.

When it comes to women, the message is a depressing one. The denigration of half of the population has embedded itself in the language in ways you may not even be aware of. Often this takes the form of "pejoration": when the meaning of the word "gets worse" over time. Linguists have long observed that words referring to women undergo this process more often than those referring to men. Here are eight examples:

Mistress

The female equivalent of "master", and thus, "a woman having control or authority" - in particular one who employs servants or attendants. It came into English with this meaning from French after the Norman conquest. From the 17th century onwards, it was used to mean "a woman other than his wife with whom a man has a long-lasting sexual relationship".

Hussy

This once neutral term meant the female head of a household. Hussy is a contraction of 13th-century husewif - a word cognate with modern "housewife". From the 17th century onwards, however, it began to mean "a disreputable woman of improper behaviour". That's now its only meaning.

Madam

The female equivalent of "sir", a woman of high rank, is still used in formal contexts as a mode of address. From the late 18th century it was also used to mean "a conceited or precocious girl or young woman; a hussy, a minx", alternatively, a kept mistress or prostitute, and finally, from the late 19th century, the female manager of a brothel.

Governess

From the 15th century onwards, "a woman who holds or exercises authority over a place, institution, or group of people". Compare it with "governor". Over time it drastically narrowed in scope and fell in status, coming to mean "a woman responsible for the care, supervision, or direction of a person, typically a child or young lady".

Spinster

This occupational term originally meant simply someone, usually a woman but possibly a man, who spun yarn or thread. Since a woman without a husband might have to rely on spinning as a source of income, the term became associated with unmarried women, eventually becoming the legal way to refer to one. The more loaded use of it to refer to "a woman still unmarried; esp. one beyond the usual age for marriage, an old maid" begins in the early 18th century.

Courtesan

One of the most dramatic shifts in meaning, from the female equivalent of "courtier" - someone who attends the court of a monarch - to a form of prostitute, which is now its only meaning.

Wench

A 13th-century word meaning a female infant or a young unmarried woman quickly acquired negative connotations: from the late 14th century, in Langland and Chaucer it is used to mean "a wanton woman; a mistress".

Tart

Collins dictionary says that this is a 19th-century contraction of "sweetheart", a term of endearment, particularly to women. From 1887, however, it is attested as meaning "a female of immoral character; a prostitute".

Thinking about the male equivalents of some of these words throws their sexism into sharp relief. Master for mistress; sir for madam; governor for governess; bachelor for spinster; courtier for courtesan - whereas the male list speaks of power and high status, the female list has a very different set of connotations. These are of either subordinate status or sexual service to men. The crucial thing to remember is that at one time, they were simply equivalents.

These eight words show how social conditions leave their mark on the language. The process of pejoration may take place below the level of consciousness, but in historical perspective, the direction of travel is obvious. Have the achievements of the feminist movement percolated down through the many layers of our language? The Oxford Dictionaries controversy suggests not. Can the words we use to describe women avoid the fate of hussy, mistress and courtesan? There's hope, but only time will tell.

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Eight words that reveal the sexism at the heart of the English language | David Shariatmadari

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Linguists call it collocation: the likelihood of two words occurring together. If I say "pop", your mental rolodex will begin whirring away, coming up with candidates for what might follow. "Music", "song" or "star", are highly likely. "Sensation" or "diva" a little less so. "Snorkel" very unlikely indeed.

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An extensive glossary (used for A-level)

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An extensive glossary (used for A-level)

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https://www.slideshare.net/BCALevels/alevel-english-glossary

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What makes a word real? e.g. adorkable, defriend...

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What makes a word real? e.g. adorkable, defriend...

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How many more can you think of? Watch this TED talk.

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One could argue that slang words like 'hangry,' 'defriend' and 'adorkable' fill crucial meaning gaps in the English language, even if they don't appear in the dictionary. After all, who actually decides which words make it into those pages? Language historian Anne Curzan gives a charming look at the humans behind dictionaries, and the choices they make.

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http://www.macmillandictionary.com/buzzword/recent.html

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The top 10 words that describe themselves

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The top 10 words that describe themselves

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Can you think of anymore?

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I did Words That Are the Opposite of Their Meaning (such as monosyllabic, misspelled) a while ago , but this is slightly different. It started with Moose Allain, who commented: "‏When you write the word awkward you realise it suits its meaning." Alex ‏asked which one: the adjective, uncomfortable, out of place; or the noun, a secure wing in Tolkien's little discussed Middle-earth health service institutions?

1. Languid. Thanks to Lisa Markwell, for whom I shall peel a grape.

2. Spindly. Dylan Beattie asked if I ever think that "plinth" is a really plinthy sort of word. No, but I do think spindly, which he also nominated, is spindly.

3. Curt.

4. Intertwined. Suggested by Kirsty Major. It makes perfect sense to me. I also like meander.

5. Grandiloquent. Humbly put forward for the honour of inclusion in this compendium by Peter Russell.

6. , who also suggested Turgid. Nominated by Anthony Ingleton viscous.

7. Pentasyllabic. Neat, by Russell Smith.

8. Autological. Haggard Hawks Words reminds us that this means "words that describe themselves".

9. ‏ bed. Made by Mike Brown.

10. Cantankerous, sly, smooth, zesty. I'll take them all, from Tom Freeman.

There is always one, and this week it is Martin Rosenbaum, who offers "non-self-descriptive": "if it does describe itself, it doesn't; but if it doesn't, then it does..."

Finally, an honourable mention for Simon, who nominated "abbrev", "even though it's not a real word".

Next week: Most Obscure Titles of Politicians' Memoirs, such as Porridge and Passion by Jonathan Aitken

Coming soon: Invented Languages, such as Elvish, Klingon and Esperanto
Listellany: A Miscellany of Very British Top Tens, From Politics to Pop, is available as an e-book for £3.79. Your suggestions, and ideas for future Top 10s, in the comments please, or to me on Twitter, or by email to top10@independent.co.uk
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I did Words That Are the Opposite of Their Meaning (such as monosyllabic, misspelled) a while ago , but this is slightly different. It started with Moose Allain, who commented: "‏When you write the word awkward you realise it suits its meaning."

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It's time to consider your language choices.

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It's time to consider your language choices.

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Don't over do the superlatives. Listen to this amusing TED talk to consider the weighting of words.

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Jill Shargaa: Please, please, people. Let's put the 'awe' back in 'awesome'

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Which of the following is awesome: your lunch or the Great Pyramid of Giza? Comedian Jill Shargaa sounds a hilarious call for us to save the word "awesome" for things that truly inspire awe.

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Merriam Webster's site is abundant in linguistic treats (find out what semantic bleaching is or which word is most commonly searched for online each day)

# data[].attributes.subject
Merriam Webster's site is abundant in linguistic treats (find out what semantic bleaching is or which word is most commonly searched for online each day)

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.merriam-webster.com/