Articles Elsewhere
Lapham’s Quarterly
Reconsiderations: Word for Word (Spring 2012)
A reconsideration of the thesaurus as a 21st-century writing tool.
American Speech:
Among the New Words (Winter 2011, pp. 454-479)
Quarterly feature on neologisms (with Charles E. Carson).
Among the New Words (Fall 2011, pp. 355-376)
Quarterly feature on neologisms (with Charles E. Carson and Laurence R. Horn).
Among the New Words (Summer 2011, pp. 192-214)
Quarterly feature on neologisms (with Charles E. Carson).
New York Magazine, Vulture blog:
Chinglish Playwright David Henry Hwang on Bringing Mandarin to Broadway, Growing Up Chinese-American, and Translation Fails (Oct. 27, 2011)
“I visited a new cultural center in Shanghai in 2005 that was pretty much perfect, except for the really badly translated Chinglish signs: a handicapped restroom that said ‘Deformed Man’s Toilet,’ that kind of thing.”
The Rise of the Zuckerverb: The New Language of Facebook (Sep. 30, 2011)
This is what happens when language is optimized for social data-mining rather than natural communication.
The Corpus in the Court: ‘Like Lexis on Steroids’ (Mar. 4, 2011)
Say goodbye to the dictionary definition. Courts, long dependent on the vagaries of language, have new quantitative tools they can use to precisely pin down how words are used.
Is It Time to Welcome Our New Computer Overlords? (Feb. 17, 2011)
IBM’s Watson computer’s sense of language isn’t as human as it might seem.
On the Road to “On Language” (June 2011, pp. 344–345)
Second part of dialogic review of “On Language” review (First part by Robert Moore)
Duke University Press Log:
On the Trail of New Words, from “App” to “Nom” (Mar. 30, 2011)
Dictionary Society of North America (DSNA) Newsletter:
William Safire (1929–2009) (Vol. 33, No. 2, Fall 2009)
Was Cronkite Really the First “Anchorman”? (July 18, 2009)
How we came to use the term.
Czar Wars (Dec. 29, 2008)
How did a term for Russian royalty work its way into American government?
Who First Put “Lipstick on a Pig”? (Sep. 10, 2008)
The origins of the porcine proverb.
Pro·cras·ti·na·tion (May 14, 2008)
How we got a word for “putting things off.”
Keeping Up With the Smoneses (Aug. 16, 2006)
Are American newlyweds blending their last names?
How Does the Pentagon Say “Body Bag”? (Apr. 4, 2006)
Hint: It’s not “transfer tube.”
Spreading the Word (Apr. 23, 2009)
How language is made and why it grows.
“From A to Zimmer” (Column on OUPblog):
Building the Ultimate Spelling Bee (Oct. 30, 2008)
The Last Word (Apr. 10, 2008)
Intractable Usage Disputes: “Less” and “None” (Feb. 7, 2008)
The Super Bowl and Super Tuesday: How’d They Get So “Super”? (Jan. 31, 2008)
“Big-Up” on the Rise (Jan. 24, 2008)
“Primary” Colors (Jan. 17, 2008)
“Subprime” Ready for Prime Time (Jan. 10, 2008)
Should “Decimate” be Annihilated? (Jan. 3, 2008)
Our Nameless Decade: What “Aught” We Call It? (Dec. 27, 2007)
Quixotic Coinages: The Failure of the Epicene Pronoun (Dec. 20, 2007)
From “Nuclear Winter” to “Carbon Summer” (Dec. 13, 2007)
New Words on the Block: Back When “Movies” Were Young (Dec. 6, 2007)
The Shocking Story of “Tase” (Nov. 29, 2007)
“Word of the Year” Mania! (Nov. 15, 2007)
How Do “Miss Steaks” Go Unnoticed? It’s Along Story (Nov. 8, 2007)
When Spellcheckers Attack: Perils of the Cupertino Effect (Nov. 1, 2007)
Extending the History of Words: The Case of “Ms.” (Oct. 25, 2007)
Are We Giving Free Rei(g)n to New Spellings? (Oct. 18, 2007)
Dictionary Day is Coming… Oct. 11, 2007
One-Hit Wonders: From Hapax to Googlewhacks (Oct. 4, 2007)
The Lowly Hyphen: Reports of Its Death are Greatly Exaggerated (Sep. 27, 2007)
Oomphy Wordsmithery of the Anglosphere: New Entries in the Shorter OED (Sep. 20, 2007)
How the OED Got Shorter (Sep. 13, 2007)
The Joy (and Sorrow) of “Schadenfreude” (Sep. 6, 2007)
Prepositions: “Dull Little Words” or Unsung Linguistic Heroes? (Aug. 30, 2007)
Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism! (Aug. 23, 2007)
“Mob” Mentality, from Jonathan Swift to Karl Rove (Aug. 16, 2007)
Phrasal Patterns 2: Electric Boogaloo (Aug. 9, 2007)
Pouring New Wine Into Old Phrasal Bottles (Aug. 2, 2007)
Compounding Carbon Confusion (July 26, 2007)
A Poptastic Geekfest for Infoholics (July 19, 2007)
Shifting Idioms: An Eggcornucopia (July 12, 2007)
Tracking the Most Miniscule, Uh, Minuscule of Errors (July 5, 2007)
On the Front Lines of English, from “Thirdhand Smoke” to “Newsrotica” (June 28, 2007)
