WordFixx

Anne just mentioned a few interesting quirky phrases she and her sisters use. One is "bread and butter", used when two people are walking together and some obstacle comes up that will separate them -- just say "bread and butter" and it will be okay.  This would fall under phrases of superstition.  It's an incantation of sorts.  The idea is that bread and butter cannot be separated easily, so the two people walking will be safe from any misfortune.  In some reports, both people have to say it for it to have the desired effect. I had never heard of this usage, but I'm sure I have heard similar things, like "step on a crack, break your father's back," meant to keep quirky influences away. She says she has used it most of her life, and still thinks it in her head sometimes when a lamp post or some other obstacle comes up.  Wikipedia mentions it , without much history. Hours later: Just now, we took a trip to target to buy some new sizes of luggage

I was contemplating how many odd short words that I use are the names of fish, so I thought I would put together a list.  Common short fish names for word games (less than 8 letters), from this Wikipedia page . I can't say these will all be accepted by every game or dictionary, but they are worth knowing to expand your word power.  Some are familiar to local areas, where others are widely known around the world.  There are variations on some of these, and compound names (yellowfin tuna, sailfin silverside, etc), and many longer names.  There are also thousands of genus names for fish (like alosa, which includes shads, alewife and a herring or two) but it's hard to say how many of those are ever used on their own.   alewife + anchovy *+ ayu % bangus % barb +- barbel + barfish % bass *+- basslet % batfish + betta + bichir % bigeye blenny + boafish % boga % bonito + bowfin boxfish bream + brill brotula % burbot buri % candiru % capelin carp + catfish *+ catla % char - chub + cichl

An interesting article came up today on phys.org about how new words reach the mainstream (or fail to do so) from social media. The basic premise: "Language evolves within a social context and variations in a language are always in competition with each other. In everyday language, words are constantly being created, but not all these words persist." The examples are French words, but the data should apply to any language.  A well-placed creator at the center of a large network is more likely to get a new word across the finish line to acceptability, compared to people on the fringes using it.  No surprise here, but it was interesting to see the charts and how they broke down the analysis.  They saw three windows of 6 to 18 months each, where the word is trending, then peaking, and after that it either stays at the peak or falls back into obscurity. This wasn't based on just asking a few people.  The team analyzed "650 million tweets written in French between 2012 a

On the radio on the way home a few nights ago, we had Mark Thompson filling in for Tim Conway Jr, and the show came back from a commercial break with an mellow old-school rap song intro, and he improvised his return with "Yo, yo, yo!" ... and then immediately got self-conscious about it. It turned into an actual linguistic discussion about where "Yo!" came from and where it's at today.  He felt it was an 80s or 90s thing.  It was never really a replacement for "Hello," but technically an interjection, and specifically used to get someone's attention. The other guys at the station felt it was outdated and confrontational.  Oddly, they might still use it to call attention to something, or to show surprise at something, but they would never use it in text messaging.  Or they would find it comically lame when older people used it in a text.  I thought it was interesting that usage can be so specific that a word leaves different impressions depending on

New words are always appearing, but most of them disappear before ever making it into a proper dictionary.  Each individual has their own unique overall set of words and pronunciations, known as their "idiolect".  The next step above that is how small groups of people who get together regularly may share a few unique phrases within that group, but when they try to speak to people outside the group, those phrases will fall flat.  With our hyper-connected world, there are so many layers of language, it gets confusing. I'm regularly surprised that none of the word games we've tried will take NOOB or DERP.  I have been hearing people calling each other noobs for 5-10 years now, or saying "derp" as a sort of "oops", and calling things "derpy."  I suppose this is mostly in the realm of video gaming, but it spilled over into regular conversations a while ago. An interesting case that's currently developing is YEET.  I first heard it while pl

After watching more word history videos and reading more articles, I have had this phrase stuck in my head all week long: "How do you get a clowder of cats from a chaos of kittens?" There are a lot of bizarre names for groups of animals (and people) in English.  Most of us have heard of a FLOCK of sheep or birds, a SWARM of bees, or a SCHOOL of fish.  Maybe you've heard of a MURDER of crows.  But believe me, this list goes on and on (and on), with weird and wild phrases that come as go as language evolves.  Here's a good overview video from Rob Words . One of the earliest big lists of these can be found in "The Book of Saint Albans" from 1486.  It was one of those gentleman's guidebooks that have been with us for centuries.  Here is an edition from the Gutenberg Project - you can get to the list by doing a text search for "Swannys", just after the halfway point in the document.  This list has extremely antiquated spellings, but some of the col