It’s All Just English, Right??

On El Reg today (thanks, Brett, for the link!):

Brits and Yanks struck with embarasment embarrassment

“It’s official: English is going directly to hell in a handcart because more than half of native speakers of the lingo can’t spell ‘embarrassed’ - and even more have entered the new millennium without the foggiest idea of how 1,000 years pan out in our beloved mother tongue.…”

Make sure you check out the Times’ “Spelling Bee” and the comments, both at the end.

Equality Before the Law(yers?)

Today’s AWAD X-bonus:

We are all equal before the law, but not before those appointed to apply it.
-Stanislaw J. Lec, poet and aphorist (1909-1966)

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Now playing: Pat Benatar - Temporary Heroes
via FoxyTunes

And It Means Quite a Bit More than I Thought

Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day today:

Pestiferous!!

Hunting Pheasants and Correct Spelling

We Regret the Error

Here’s a couple of examples:

The Guardian:
We misspelled the word misspelled twice, as mispelled, in the Corrections and clarifications column on September 26, page 30.

Daily Telegraph (UK):
APOLOGY: In Friday's article on Liz Hurley’s wedding it was wrongly stated that the actress is holding a pheasant shoot on the Sunday after the ceremony. Game shooting is of course illegal on Sundays and the pheasant season ended on Feb 1. We apologise for the error and accept that if any shooting is to be done it will be by the paparazzi, who have no season and do not observe the Sabbath.

Bumper Snicker

Spotted just now on the wc9s (walking_cane-9s) list (thanks, Joanne and Phoenix):

--
Every morning is the dawn of a new error.

Bumper Snicker

Spotted this morning on the BBEdit-Talk list:

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A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on a mailing list?

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Listening to: Los Straitjackets - Here Comes Santa Claus
via FoxyTunes

Already Loving You

From Dictionary.com’s Word of the Day (solecism), today:

Her English is good, apart from a few stubborn idiosyncrasies of preposition and tense, but these are music to me, sung solecisms -- how else to describe “I am already loving you,” her first declaration of feeling for me, now two years old?
-- Ronan Bennett, The Catastrophist

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Listening to: Apollo 100 - Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring
via FoxyTunes

Perfect Timing on an Apropo Quote

Today’s AWAD X-bonus:

Let your tears come. Let them water your soul.
-Eileen Mayhew

Last night, Jon mentioned that he was planning to do (Josh Groban’s) You Raise Me Up with the men and boys choir this summer…

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Now playing: Till Brönner - A Distant Episode
via FoxyTunes

The Washington Post’s Alternate Meanings

(thanks to Thom, Capt Redbeard, on CeltList)

Once again, The Washington Post published its yearly contest in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for various words.

And the winners are…

1. Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon.

2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.

3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absent-mindedly answer the door in your nightgown.

7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

8. Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavored mouthwash.

9. Flatulence (n.) the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam.

12. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions.

13. Pokemon (n), A Jamaican proctologist.

14. Frisbeetarianism (n.), The belief that, when you die, your Soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck there.

AND MY TWO PERSONAL FAVORITES…

15. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you.

16. Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts

As Ice Thaws, Arctic Peoples at Loss for Words

From Reuters UK recently:
As Ice Thaws, Arctic Peoples at Loss for Words

Again, thanks to today’s AWADmail (issue 145) for the pointer.

The Most Beautiful Word in (British-Influenced?) English

On smh.com.au today:
For all the world mother is most beautiful… but father from the thought

Thanks to today’s AWADmail (issue 145) for the pointer.