Language Log: The twilight of -ess
To follow up on Mark's post, below, on the bottomless fatuity of Robert Fisk: we gave a bunch of these items in -ess to the members of the American Heritage Usage Panel some years ago; Kristen Hanson...
View ArticleLanguage Log: A shibboleth in time
James McElvenney comes to the defense of Andrew Herrick ("Linguistic border security", Fully (sic) 8/16/2010). Shorter version: Herrick argued that Americanisms are polluting the clear pool of...
View ArticleLanguage Log: Gricean bagel rage
When Paul Grice drafted his maxims for cooperative conversation, he didn't have in mind that we should get upset when people violate them. On the contrary, the whole idea was to use apparent...
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