Yearly archives: 2012
A little bit of pixie dust: five of Disney’s contributions to the English language
When we ruminate on the enormous effect all things Disney have had on popular culture from the early 20th century onwards (think ‘Steamboat Willie’ to the upcoming Star Wars films), we might call to mind hundreds of animated movies, several enormous theme parks, thousands of toys, and dozens of familiar characters—not to mention one ubiquitous [...]
Labouring language: the changing vocabulary of childbirth
Expectant parents don’t generally have a lot of spare time for idly perusing the dictionary, but if they did, they would find that the vocabulary of the event they joyfully anticipate has undergone significant changes over the centuries. Consider, for instance, the verb to deliver. In contemporary use, the mother is often the subject of [...]
Keeping it in mind – Poetry By Heart
Writing West Midlands was delighted to be asked to run a Teachers’ Days as part of the Poetry By Heart competition. As Chief Executive of Writing West Midlands, and as a reader of poetry for many years, I had a particular interest in the process of memorizing poetry and of speaking it from memory. I [...]
Cat idioms and expressions
When Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, it was perhaps with the intention of enhancing international communication, and making the workplace more efficient – useful things of that nature. What he perhaps did not expect is what seems to be the web’s [...]
Cricket and the Queen Mum: the OED’s Chief Editor discusses some fascinating words
Yesterday it was announced that John Simpson, Chief Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, will be retiring in October 2013. The full press release can be read on the OED website, and it seems an appropriate time to ask John Simpson to discuss some of the more fascinating words and expressions he has worked on: It’s hard [...]
Play ball!
In spring, as the saying goes, “a young man’s fancy lightly turns to love.” Who first penned that immortal mush, anyway? You well-read literary types probably know it was Alfred Lord Tennyson, in his poem “Locksley Hall,” and I suppose that was romantic of him, but the way I see it, when love becomes a [...]
Bible or Bard?
23 April, as every schoolchild knows, is probably the birthday, and definitely the deathday, of England’s most famous writer: William Shakespeare, often known simply as the Bard. (We don’t know his exact birth date, but he was baptized on 26 April, and it lends his life an appropriately poetic balance to assume he was born [...]
“All my love’s in vain”: the language of the blues
The following is an extract from The Blues: A Very Short Introduction by Elijah Wald (OUP 2010) pp.116-9 Even the greatest blues songwriters have seen no harm in reworking each other’s phrases. As with hip-hop sampling, the idea is to create something unique and new by a combination of borrowing, reworking, and adding original touches—with [...]
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