“Gen Z” is a lazy name, says the BridgeWorks consulting firm, which wants to replace it with “GenEdge.”
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You say Zomato, I say Zulily: The Name Inspector has been wondering about the Z-substitution trend in company naming.
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The Australian bird known as the Bell Miner doesn’t mine anything, and it doesn’t feed on bell-shaped substances. Spicks & Specks explores the fascinating false etymology. (Via Language Hat.)
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A track called “Worth It” from the girl group Fifth Harmony has been the summer’s surprise hit. Sonia Saraiya traces the cultural history of the “I’m worth it” affirmation, from L’Oreal advertising onward. (Bonus link: Read my 2013 column for the Visual Thesaurus about “I’m worth it” and “You deserve a break today.”)
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How do you translate a colloquial, nonliteral expression like Trainwreck—the title of the new Amy Schumer feature film—into non-English languages? IMDb has a list of global akas; Mashable has helpfully re-translated some of them. (Not included in the Mashable list: Y de repente tú (“And suddenly you”), probably the most romantically inclined of the bunch. In France, by the way, the official title is Crazy Amy—yes, in English.
Translation of the French Canadian title, Cas désespéré.
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Egotarian, Tinderella, ghosting, and other new words Mike Pope has recently encountered. “I apologize in advance that a lot of these terms are unpleasant,” he adds.
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(Via James Harbeck.)
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Three guys were watching HBO’s “Silicon Valley” when it occurred to them to create a dictionary of jargon used on the show. The result is Silicon Valley Dictionary, where you’ll find definitions for terms like This changes everything (“Nothing has changed. Pure marketing”) and Awesome journey (“used when a startup has failed”).
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The New Devil’s Dictionary is a jaundiced update of Ambrose Bierce’s famous 1906 lexicon. Sample definition: “war on drugs (n.): The noble enterprise of preserving the sanctity of alcoholism.”
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And speaking of alcohol: Bianca Bosker reports for the New Yorker on “the state of modern winespeak” and “the nearly decade-long crusade against overwrought and unreliable flavor descriptions.”
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More on this theme: Did you know that there is a color called Drunk-Tank Pink? From Mental Floss, 19 colors you’ve probably never heard of. (Bonus link: Read my 2011 column for the Visual Thesaurus, “Where Have All the Ordinary Color Names Gone?”
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What can you buy at a Canadian homo store? What was 7-Eleven’s original name? The lore and lingo of convenience stores, presented by Wordnik’s Angela Tung.
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Politico: Donald Trump talks like a third-grader! Language Log: Hold on just a minute there!
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And for you fans of swears and swearing, I have a new post on Strong Language about “shit happens” and its many variants.
I can't reproduce the "participatorier" error supposedly produced by Word's spell-checking function, so I have my doubts about that. It's not a word in English, so there would be no reason for it to appear in Word's dictionary unless someone had explicitly added it to the custom dictionary in their own version of Word. Word doesn't just make up terms as suggestions.
It's interesting for me to review the posts on the "Seriously, Spellcheck?" blog to try to understand why the checker has suggested its suggestion. For most of them, the suggestion is not correct, but you can see how the Word probably arrived at the suggestion. It certainly also goes to show that one's relationship with the spell checker should be that of wiser master interacting with a very thorough but somewhat dim underling.
Re: the Silicon Valley Dictionary. Great idea, not super-well executed, and an entirely closed system. AFAIK, they publish no contact info where one could send them suggestions or even notification of typos. (?)
Posted by: mike | August 19, 2015 at 09:25 AM