This, That

A few miscellaneous items for the first full day of (Northern Hemisphere) winter. Tomorrow: Festivus! I’ll present my annual Airing of Grievances.

~ * ~

The Japanese word of the year, announced by the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation on December 12, is kizuna. The word, which means “bonds between people,” was frequently used to express the solidarity and support shown by Japanese people in response to the disastrous earthquake and tsunami in March.

 

(Hat tip: Rochelle Kopp of Japan Intercultural Consulting.)

~ * ~

Every year since 2006, expatriate American linguist Lynne Murphy, who blogs at Separated by a Common Language, has selected two words of the year: the most useful import from American English into British English and the most useful import from British into American. This year, the most useful UK-to-US word is kettling, which happens to be a word I nominated! (You may recall that it was a Fritinancy word of the week in October.) The most useful US-to-UK word is FTW, an abbreviation of “for the win.” And yes, initialisms are words. Be sure to read Lynne’s thoughtful and well-informed defen{s/c}es  of her selections.

~ * ~

Speaking of FTW, I’m flattered and delighted that my blog has been nominated for a Macmillan Dictionary “Love English” award in the blog category. I’m in excellent (read: daunting) competition: Separated by a Common Language, Language Hat, Johnson, Sentence First, Throw Grammar from the Train, Language Log—and several language blogs I’d been unaware of, which is always the most interesting thing, in my opinion, about contests like this one. If you’d like to cast a vote for Fritinancy, I’d be most grateful. There’s also a Best Website category; check out all the links, then vote for Visual Thesaurus.

~*~

A little comic relief: You may recognize Christopher McDonald, David Koechner, Maria Bamford (the crazy Target Christmas lady), and Andre Royo (Bubbles from The Wire) in Funny or Die’s spot-on spoof of campaign commercials. Yes, let’s restore the dignity and the tradition of our Founding Santas!

Via AdFreak.

Comments

[Risa]

I voted for you! Let's hope it's Fritinancy FTW.