Johnson, the language blog of The Economist, on the new coinage, “Zimmering.”
GEOFF NUNBERG thinks he may have coined the word “logotariat” for people who write informally about language, and he’s probably right. He googled it when he wrote it and found no hits (and five years ago, the internet already had around 10 trillion words on it). He’s not certain, though—making certain would take “more intense Zimmering than I’m capable of”. He might have coined a second word there; “to Zimmer” would be to trace a word back to its earliest usages, antedating others’ claims of the first recorded usage, as Ben Zimmer (of the New York Times) expertly does.
Interview on WNYC’s “The Leonard Lopate Show” about Sarah Palin’s use of “refudiate,” and other invented words.
Ben Zimmer, the On Language columnist for the New York Times SundayMagazine, discusses recent invented words: from Sarah Palin’s recent use of the word “refudiate,” to words like “ginormous,” which have become part of the popular lexicon.
Interview on the WBUR show “Here and Now” about the language of “Mad Men.”
The Emmy Award-winning show, “Mad Men,” returns to AMC Sunday night. The show strives to perfectly capture the look, feel and attitudes of the 1960’s through the lives of executives at a Madison Avenue advertising agency. But strive as they may, the writers sometimes fall short when trying to get the language just right. Ben Zimmer, “On Language” columnist for the Sunday New York Times magazine looks at the linguistics of the series to see what expressions belong to the 60’s and which ones were born in, like, other decades. Watch Ben Zimmer’s compilation of Mad Men Anachronisms below.
Interview on WNYC’s “The Brian Lehrer Show” about the “old-timey diction” of Yankees announcer Bob Sheppard. (July 16, 2010)
Legendary announcer Bob Sheppard is being honored at Yankee Stadium today. We follow up on a particular quirk in his delivery. Ben Zimmer, writer of the “On Language” column in the NY Times Magazine, talks about Sheppard’s voice and why people spoke so differently way back when.
Interview on WNYC’s “Radiolab” about unfortunate search-and-replace errors. Did you know Queen Elizabeth lays up to 2,000 eggs a day? (June 28, 2010)
You come up with a great idea. You devise a brilliant plan. You control for every imaginable variable. And once everything’s in place, the train hops your carefully laid tracks. Oops. In this hour of Radiolab, unintended consequences abound.
Interview on WNYC’s “The Takeaway” about what to call the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. (June 23, 2010)
Ben Zimmer joins us; he writes the On Language column for The New York Times. People are passionate about the language we’re using to define the oil catastrophe (from “oil-apocalypse” to “runaway oil”). Zimmer says that we’re searching for a term that helps embody the magnitude of the Gulf spill. He looks at historical connotations behind some of the words in use like “gusher” and “rupture,” as well as at the language that was used to describe the Ixtoc blowout in the Gulf of Mexico 20 years ago to see if it can help put these words in perspective.
Over the weekend, I — and many other blogging types — were directed to an item on the Language Log blog from a few years back, suggesting that Manute Bol may have played a role either in creating or popularizing the phrase “my bad.” He certainly was one of the first NBA players to be quoted using it, in early 1989. … Well, since I may have played some extremely minor role in us reaching that point, I figure it’s only fair for me to do my part to debunk it. Ben Zimmer, who writes the On Language column for the NYT Magazine, just presented at least five “my bad” usages that pre-date Bol’s first “my bad” quote, one of which was uttered by Rex Chapman, of all people. And one of these came in 1985, more than three years before Bol used it in print.