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Q: I was reading an op-ed that had this quote from Abraham Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address: “That is cool.” At first I thought it was satire, but he did indeed [...]
Q: Here’s the title of a post on a blog I follow: “More osculation of religion by the NYT and Free Press.” I’m not aware of this figurative use of [...]
Q: Can euphemisms turn into dysphemisms and vice versa? If yes, why does it happen? A: Yes, euphemisms can turn into dysphemisms, and vice versa. The change from a euphemism [...]
Q: Was it ever normal to rhyme “misery” and “high”? I’m thinking of a couplet (“Make safe the way that leads on high, / And close the path to misery”) [...]
Q: I saw this headline over an NPR article: “VP Vance tries to progress Gaza ceasefire.” Is that a permissible use of “progress”? I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen it [...]
Q: I say “fetch” when I want my Lab, Gracie, to retrieve something, but “fetching” may refer to her good looks as well as her retrieving. Am I right to [...]
Q: I’ve been hearing the word “hopium” used for an imaginary opiate taken to achieve unrealistic optimism, and “copium” used for one taken to endure hard times. I don’t see [...]
Q: After reading your recent article about Hank Stram’s coining a football sense of “matriculate,” I remembered reading a long way back that Stram also coined “Super Bowl.” A: No, [...]
[Note: In observation of Christmas week, we’re republishing a post that originally appeared on Dec. 23, 2022.] Q: Which is the more traditional version of this Christmas carol: “God Rest [...]
Q: I thought I might further muddy the waters of the wonderful word featured in your post about “dasn’t.” I once saw it defined as a contraction of “darest not,” [...]
Q: I was catching up with The Wire, the TV crime series. In episode one of season five, originally aired in 2008, editors at The Baltimore Sun tell a reporter [...]
Q: I’ve been noticing lately the strange use of “went to go” to form the past tense, as in “went to go see a movie,” “went to go swim,” and [...]
Q: Why did grammatical gender ever develop in the first place, and to what purpose? English lost it centuries ago, apparently to no ill effect. A: Grammatical gender, a system for [...]
Q: Do you think “you and I” should be “you and me” in the first part of Genesis 31:44 (English Standard Version): “Come now, let us make a covenant, you [...]
Q: In the class-conscious Sussex, England, of the 1950s, my mother would label certain people at the village Women’s Institute “not quite quite.” What is the history of this usage? [...]
Q: When I hear football sportscasters state that Team 1 has “matriculated” the football down the field, I (perhaps smugly) question whether the sportscasters have ever matriculated themselves. A: Standard dictionaries [...]
Q: My daughter and I were watching a DVD of the 1942 Disney film Bambi when I thought of this question: Is the verb “fawn” (to show affection or flatter) [...]
Q: What is the meaning of “smack” in a sentence like “it smacked of bigotry”? A: When something “smacks of bigotry,” it has a trace or a suggestion of bigotry, [...]
Q: The expression “as I alluded to earlier” has been rife amongst sports broadcasters and now seems to have spread beyond that sphere. Is the use of “allude” for a [...]
Q: I saw this sentence the other day in Two Faced Murder, a 1946 mystery by Jean Leslie: “The professor is yclept Peter, and I hate to have him called Pete.” What’s [...]
I just rewatched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance after decades, and it was just as good (and cynical) as I remembered — I especially enjoyed Edmond O’Brien as Dutton [...]
I will not say James Willis’s “The Science of Blunders: Confessions of a Textual Critic” is the best thing ever written about textual criticism; that would be absurd, since I’ve [...]
I’m stealing ShooBoo’s MeFi post, title and all (it means ‘Irishman in space’), because I can’t improve on it: Manannán, written in 1940 by Máiréad Ní Ghráda is an Irish-language [...]
This is one of those words I thought I knew, but it turns out I had only a partial view of. My wife and I were watching the making-of extra [...]
I was intrigued by Martin Haspelmath’s Facebook post: What’s the most user-friendly corpus site? Maybe Abdulaev et al. (2022)’s corpus of the Dagestanian language Tsez (78 texts, almost 5000 text [...]
From the home page: “Starobulgarska Literatura” (“Medieval Bulgarian Literature”) is a specialized peer-reviewed journal dedicated to medieval Bulgarian literature and culture and their Byzantine and European contexts. Since Medieval Bulgarian [...]
1) Jeanna Smialek, “What French Romance Novels Could Tell Us About A.I. and Translation Jobs” (NY Times, Feb. 15, 2026; archived): The European Union, with its 27 nations and two [...]
Hermione Lee’s NYRB review (February 12, 2026 issue; archived) of Francesca Wade’s new life of Gertrude Stein starts with a pleasing quotation: As part of her account of how amazingly [...]
From Laurence Anthony’s Website (“Welcome to AntLab! This site showcases my various software tools, publications, and presentations”) comes WordFamilyFinder: “Look up words in the 30 baseword lists (and 4 supplementary [...]
Yiddish Empowerment Coach has an interesting Facebook post: What if I told you that sometimes, transliteration is more authentic than using the alef-beys? We’re often taught that “real” Yiddish lives [...]
Margherita Bassi reports for Smithsonian magazine on another remarkable development in decipherment: A little more than a thousand years ago, monks at Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt’s Sinai desert removed [...]
Natasha Wimmer’s lengthy NYRB review essay on Alejo Carpentier (February 22, 2024; archived) has some good Hattic material near the start: The historical novels that make up most of his [...]
I found Wouter J. Hanegraaff’s Facebook post extraordinarily depressing; I’ll reproduce it here (apart from the photos, which show lots of empty shelves) so you can be depressed too (or [...]
I have always vaguely wondered how far back that famous phrase goes, and Dave Wilton has done the relevant spadework at Wordorigins: The phrase take me to your leader is [...]
Nicholas Andresen’s recent post annoys me somewhat because (like almost everyone else) he writes as if “AI” were some kind of “conscious” “agent” that does things with purpose (it starts [...]
I’ve praised Tessa Hadley many times at LH (e.g., last year), and I’m going to do so again; her latest New Yorker story, “The Quiet House” (archived), is every bit [...]
If you want to blow your wig, cast your pies on the Hepcats Jive Talk Dictionary (1945): In the old days the people greeted a new ruler with the cry: [...]
I was reading Mary M. Wiles’ Interview with Jacques Rivette (yes, I’m still on my Rivette kick; I recently saw his late sort-of-thriller Secret défense and posted a rant about [...]
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BONUS:
My Political Platform
I thought it would be fun to put it on paper to finally get it out of my system, so here’s my “enlightened libertarian moderate” platform. Basically, it’s a generous welfare state with conscription and dog-eat-dog capitalism.
Call this my 21st Century Moderately Progressive Libertarian platform.
Elect me president and I will..
Militia
– Ask not what your country can do for you
-This is the cornerstone, and would probably require a constitutional amendment. Mandatory 2-year coed military service at age 18, which includes a generous tuition for college or technical training afterward. Let’s call it Militia. You can opt-out with a hefty cash payment, or just not make it past boot camp, but you permanently lose the benefits of citizenship – the right to vote, run for public office, be on juries, and bear arms. If Militia is missed for whatever reason, citizenship could be earned later than age 18, but the financial reward would be eliminated and the length of service would be extended somewhat.
Handicapped people (or asthma, autism, etc) would go though special needs boot camps and work in support/IT.
In peacetime Militia would work in either peacekeeping operations led by the UN or NATO or work in FDR-style federal works programs and law enforcement.
Militia would solve many problems such as unnecessary wars, student debt, and youthful ennui. Also, all immigrants would be required to perform this service, even having spanish (or Cantonese!) only brigades. Quakers and others religious groups can qualify for conscientious objector status (if a nonmilitary support role isn’t peaceful enough for them) but the benefits of citizenship will be denied.
Voting and Electoral
-Eliminate the electoral college
-Massively invest into blockchain open-source election software development
Economy
-Lower corporate taxes and regulation
-Raise personal taxes, keep it progressive, eliminate all deductions
-Eliminate the minimum wage completely
-End all farm and coal subsidies
-Promote a 100% paperless cashless government
-Put reduction of our national debt as a top priority of government policy.
-Return to the gold standard, possibly somehow converting the dollar into a Bitcoin style currency
-Abolishing all corporate welfare, including the Import-Export Bank
-Abolishing all non-environmental regulation of agriculture, including subsidies. Large scale hemp cultivation re-legalized and taxed.
-Support and expand all free trade agreements.
-No corporation is too big to fail. Creative destruction must be embraced.
-Moderate slavery reparations via postgraduate degrees
Environment
-Expand environmental regulation with carbon credits; solar and wind power credits greatly expanded
-Maintain EPA at current levels. Halt Keystone.
Foreign Policy
-Stop being the global policeman – do not take sides in international conflicts, especially in the Middle East. We should have not meddled in Libya, Syria, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam – basically every conflict since Korea. This includes Israel, which although is a natural ally and is our friend and a beacon of light democracy and hope in the Middle East, is mighty enough to stand on its own. However, if Israel is ever invaded, help them to the utmost. Update 2022: EXCEPT UKRAINE!
-Push for a free Kurdistan carved from parts of Turkey Syria and Iran as a free economic zone to encourage investment to pay for reparations for surrounding governments.
-Don’t give Putin an inch.
-Be a fire breathing, drone using hawk when it comes to nukes.
-Halt all international aid programs
-Increase special ops and drone technology and expand Obama’s reliance on use of drones and Bin Laden-style assassinations.
-Close Guantanamo
Education
Encourage privatization with school choice and vouchers.
Health & Homefront
-Keep Obamacare, expand to single-payer but limit the spending for those over 65 to manageable levels commensurate to the young.
-Offer free counseling, rehab, and jobs to all drug and alcohol addicts in FDR-style federal work projects.
-Relax FDA restrictions of orphan drugs (i.e. smart drugs, performance-enhancing supplements proven to be safe)
-Legalize and normalize assisted suicide
-Expand abortion rights
-Eliminate private prisons
-Allow handguns and rifles and open carry to remain legal, but ban all assault rifles, increase screening, increase penalties for gun violations, offer buybacks for guns
-Legalize drugs on the federal level but offer funds for state-level enforcement. Take all savings and reinvest into drug treatment programs
Law and Order/Immigration
-Heightened sentences for violent offenders and crime in general, with financial penalties significantly increased
-Legalizing all drugs on the federal level including cocaine, meth, and heroin and immediately releasing all drug prisoners. Tax drugs. States however are free to regulate as they see fit and would play a key role in preventing a return to the Great Binge of the late 1800s.
-Offer free housing to homeless people, it’s cheaper than what we have now. Possibly put them to work with Militia
-Eliminate the death penalty, which while deeply gratifying from a social vengeance perspective has frankly proven to be too costly and sometimes we killed the wrong guy.
-Relaxing gun control laws, but requiring insurance.
-Beefing up federal internet law enforcement, possibly a whole new Federal Internet Crime bureau
-Expand immigration for those with high-tech skills
-Make Militia mandatory for able-bodied immigrants for citizenship. Immigrants who do any crime within 10 years of military service get deported and recorded into an expanded national database.
-Rather than focus on keeping immigrants out, I would focus on making them prefer their own neighboring countries. Militia can help them on public projects, schools hospitals, and crime control.
-Work more with local churches and synagogues in sponsoring persecuted Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Muslims, etc.
I wouldn’t have a chance of winning… “Hi, elect me, I’m gonna put all you Millennials in boot camps.”
Infographics
Memes
