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What’s Verbatim? Verbatim is a magazine devoted to what is amusing, interesting, and engaging about the English language and languages in general. We strive to bring fascinating topics out of the dusty obscurity of dry linguistic scholarship and polish them up for the general reader with an intelligent interest in language. We gently poke fun at the messes people can get into with English and the misunderstandings that arise from our common language. All this, plus a generous helping of book reviews, should provide an hour or two’s diversion for the person interested in language.
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VERBATIM Articles, Book Reviews, News
Authors and Articles Vol XXII
Authors and Articles VolumeNumberAuthorTitle XXII1Mohapatra, Ashok K.Politicking with Words: On Ideology and Dictionary Meaning XXII1Emerson, Ralph H.Horse Words in a Motor Age XXII1Egan, GaryChunnel Vision XXII1Howard, Hilary M.No Boys Named Sue, But... XXII1Bowmer,...
VERBATIM on the Beach: A Summer Reading List
While neighboring sunbathers tan to the latest religious-conspiracy novel or Washington-insider tell-all, you can relax with one or another great book about language, some of them stranger than fiction or politics. For instance, it's difficult to put down Stefan...
Strictly Speaking
STRICTLY SPEAKING, Edwin Newman, Bobbs-Merrill, 1974, ix + 193 pp. $7.95 [Reviewed by Laurence Urdang] Linguists, especially lexicographers, are bound by a scholarly oath to describe--neither to prescribe nor proscribe--language, and their mission is to record, in as...
Letters
Dear Sir: Just a couple of SIC!s from Vol. 24 No. 1. 1. In the article "The Last Pibroch", the author writes of clan chiefs memorizing a few words of Gaelic "to impress visiting dignatories." Is this the Gaelic for "dignitaries"? 2. Concerning Odet's use of the word...
English as she is spoke: The new guide of the conversation in Portuguese and English in two parts, by Pedro Caroline (Jose da Fonseca)
We expect then, who the little book (for the care what we wrote him, and for her typographical correction) that may be worth the expectation of the studious persons, and especially of the Youth, at which we dedicate him particularly. With these words, Jose da Fonseca...
Darn, Durn, Down, Doon, Damn
Dwight Bolinger Professor of Linguistics Emeritus Harvard University Minced oaths are etymological landmines, and if I were a better guesstymologist I probably would not tread on this one; but if it is a coincidence it is too good to be true, so here goes....
Authors and Articles Volume XIII
Authors and Articles VolumeNumberAuthorTitle XIII1Kahn, John EllisonPolysemania, Semantic Taint, and Related Conditions XIII1Lazerson, Barbara HuntPatterned Words and Phrases XIII1Queenan, JoeWhen Everything Was Everything XIII1Hirschberg, StephenPlaying Words with...
Reading the Traces of James Murray in the Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary has often been described, rightly, as a remarkably readable set of books. Rose Macaulay’s description of "the inexhaustible pleasure to be extracted from the perusal of this dictionary" is typical of a long series of similar responses,...
Authors and Articles Vol XXIII
Authors and Articles VolumeNumberAuthorTitle XXIII1Schindler, Marc A.(Dia)critic's Corner XXIII1Richler, HowardGalling Gallicisms of Quebec English XXIII1Temianka, DanielThe King of Wordsmiths XXIII1Davidson, J. A.The Problem of Names XXIII1Crilly, JosephineTurning To...
Erin McKean
Erin McKean has wanted to be a lexicographer since she was eight years old. After reading an article in the newspaper about the publishing of the supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, she realized that making dictionaries would be a cool job. (Luckily, she...
Words For Their Own Sake
John Konrad Kern Signal Hill, California Strip a word of its meaning and etymology and what do you have? You have a collection of alphabetic characters arranged in a unique order. Devoid of definition, however, these strings of letters have virtually no utility. But I...
Slayer Slang (Part 1)
by Michael Adams Albright College Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BTVS), a recent teen television hit, coins slang terms and phrases in nearly every episode, many of them formed in the usual ways, some of them at the crest of new formative tendencies, and some of them...
A Bawdy Language
A Bawdy Language: How A Second-Rate Language Slept Its Way to the Top, by Howard Richler, Stoddart, 1999. ISBN: 0-7737-3186-5. 208 pp. $15.95/£9.86 As you might guess from the title, A Bawdy Language is a rather irreverent and almost relentlessly topical romp through...
New Work from David Galef
Long-time readers of VERBATIM will recognize the name David Galef; his pieces in our magazine consistently garner compliments (and the editor is always pleased to find a new one coming across her email transom). But VERBATIM, as you all know, only publishes...
Authors and Articles Volume XIV
Authors and Articles VolumeNumberAuthorTitle XIV1Demy, Nicholas G.Go to the Dictionary, Thou Sluggard XIV1Cahill, BrianWay To Go, Aubie! XIV1Soyka, Dan E.Whither Thou, Thee, Thy and Thine XIV1Cohen, HarryMicrolinguistics XIV1Howard, VirginiaIn Praise of St. Jerome...
Books by Nicholas Humez
Humez, Alexander and Nicholas, and Goldfrank, Edward and Janice, The Boston basin Bicycle Book. Boston: Godine, 1975. Out of print. Humez, Alexander and Nicholas, Latin for People/Latina pro Populo. Boston: Little, Brown, 1976. Humez, Nicholas, Silversmithing : A...
The Twelve Days of Christmas
We're not quite at the "partridge in a pear tree" stage of the month yet, but I thought you might all enjoy this review, by Larry Urdang, of Thomas L. Bernard's The Twelve Days of Christmas: The Mystery and The Meaning, from Vol. XXI/3: Professor Bernard, who teaches...
The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary
BIBLIOGRAPHIA The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary, by Paul Dickson , 592 pp. Harvest Books (Harcourt Brace and Company), 1999. Hardcover $35.00, Paperback $20.00. We speak baseball all the time. Even those of us who know nothing about the nuances of the game...
Identity and Language in the SM Scene
For the past seven years, I have been studying the process of identity formation among SM/radical-sex practitioners living in and around New York City, in preparation for my doctoral thesis in cultural anthropology. Among the first things that I noticed when I started...
Graphic Account
As code, is how the alphabet Began in use. Visible ink. Cuneiform, which few regret, Did everything most people think Essential in a writing system For three millennia of sale, Gift, loan-could number, name, and list them, Hard copy, should agreement fail. It was so...
Winter 2000 Back Issue
Where Did He Put The Pen of My Aunt? Navajo Revealed David C. Cates Maplewood, New Jersey Intricate miracles underlie even ordinary events like sunshine, eyesight, and air. Yet their ordinariness seems to stifle the kindling of wonder. This may be the point of a...
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