I'm on jury duty this week and up against multiple deadlines, so posting will be less frequent than usual. In my temporary absence, I suggest that you peruse these fine posts by friends, colleagues, and strangers for whom I have the utmost respect:
Just in time for the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, SherryGrammarian instructs us about loonies, toonies, two-fours, and other features of the Canadian language.
What happens when you blend two overlapping two-word idioms—say, sweet tooth and tooth fairy? You get a sweet tooth fairy, of course. UK actor/marketing guy Graham Hidderley/Burgess (he prefers the slash to the more mundane hyphen) has compiled a slew of the coinages at his blog, The Illustrated Sweet Tooth Fairy. A few of my favorites: pistol whipped cream, unrequited love handles, and—speaking of international sporting events—Olympic torch song. (Via Erin McKean's The Word column in the Boston Globe.)
John McIntyre has a word for the defenders of the no-split-infinitives faux rule, and the word is mumpsimus. It's a word I'm fond of myself.
Here's some sweet news: According to Information Week, Google is naming its Android versions after desserts. In alphabetical order. So far, there's Cupcake, Donut, Eclair, and Froyo (frozen yogurt). No, I don't know what happened to A and B, but I'm definitely looking forward to Zabaglione. Hey, it's better than Nexus One. (Via On the Button.)
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