Great news for researchers and thesaurus-lovers: the Historical Thesaurus of English is now fully online, with many new features. It’s based on the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and its supplements, with additional materials from A Thesaurus of Old English. (Via Marc Alexander.)
*
I linked to the Wordbirds blog back in 2009. Now this “irreverent lexicon for the 21st century” is available as a book containing more than 200 neologisms—150 of them not on the blog—coined by Liesl Schillinger and illustrated by Elizabeth Zechel. An excellent gift for the person who finds himself rushing cell-mell to a clusterfete, wouldn’t you say?
*
On his excellent Big Apple blog, Barry Popik documents the rise of “spicedictive” (Sonic Drive-in’s portmanteau of “spice” and “addictive”) and “beefulness” (McDonald’s South Africa’s blend of “beef” and “fullness,” and yes, I thought it had something to do with beekeeping). By the way, you can finally follow Mr. Popik on Twitter!
*
And speaking of Twitter: “The wind tickled Jack’s ears as he rushed toward the Stock Exchange…” The opening line of “The Unfollowed: A story of heartbreak, longing, and betrayal on IPO day,” by Ellen Cushing for San Francisco magazine.
*
Fourteen common words that didn’t exist 20 years ago. “Blog” and “Google” (verb) are just the beginning. (Via Ben Zimmer.)
*
You know what else got started 20 years ago? The “Got Milk?” ad campaign. Ad man Jeff Goodby, who was present at the creation, tells how “the most boring product imaginable” inspired “the most remembered tagline in beverage history, outstripping those of beer and soft drink companies with budgets many times the size of ours.” (Not mentioned in Goodby’s story: The campaign didn’t translate well into Spanish: “¿Tiene Ud. Leche?” means “Are you lactating?”)
*
All the good domains are not taken. Name developer Anthony Shore shows how to create them.
*
“Afternoonified,” “chuckaboo,” and 54 other delightful Victorian slang terms you should be using. (Via Girls of a Certain Age.)
*
In Canada, Dutch-owned bank ING Direct was sold to Scotiabank and is now called Tangerine. Design blog Brand New says the name choice is “ballsy”: “At first, the name sounds like a late 1990s, early 2000s doomed clever company name, like Monday, but the longer you watch the video ... and the more you let the name sink in, it’s a rather impressively sticky name. It’s memorable. It stand outs [sic] in the banking sector. It’s interesting.” Name development by Bay Area agency Lexicon; logo by Toronto-based Concrete.
(Also see my post about Tomato Bank.)
*
William Germano and I have something in common: a minor obsession with gratuitous umlauts. Germano writes in Lingua Franca about “the rise of the reckless diacritical,” a meditation triggered by a sighting of Clöudz travel blankets and pillows. And it gets worse, writes Germano: “The Tommy Hilfiger clothing line has launched, with a linguistic swagger, a global marketing campaign entitled Cärpe-díem Mañana.” (Also see my Pinterest board of brand names with gratuitous umlauts and my Visual Thesaurus column on the Ündeniable Ümlaut.)
Comments