This page lists some memorable, and not so memorable, moments in 2003 where English usage was in the spotlight....

For lovers of English usage, there's great links here, but grab them while they're still hot!  

The Usenet newsgroup for English usage maintains a site at http://www.alt-usage-english.org.  This site is a commercial-free zone dedicated to providing an Internet presence for the news://alt.usage.english newsgroup.

This page was created using technology from the http://www.yaelf.com site.

Punctuation!!!! Who needs it???? Do we really care that the italic typeface was invented by a geezer called Aldus Manutius the Elder (1449-1515)? Is it of interest to anyone that he was also the man who printed the first semicolon? And is the semicolon really 'a compliment from the writer to the reader'? Do you really have to count to two in between two related but independent clauses before you use it? When is it correct to use an_ er_ ellipsis? Will not an ordinary dash - like this one - do just as well?

Well, Lynne Truss, who is a little worried about the dash - I know how you feel, Lynne - has written a 'zero- tolerance approach to punctuation' that aims to explain why it really does matter. She has called it Eats, Shoots and Leaves , a title which comes from a joke in which a panda goes into a bar, asks for a ham sandwich, eats it and then takes out a revolver and fires it into the air. When the publican asks him what on earth he is doing, he throws a book on to the bar and growls: 'This is a badly punctuated wildlife manual. Look me up.' The barman flicks through the book and, under the relevant entry, reads: 'PANDA. Large, black-and-white, bear-like mammal native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.'

There are plenty of laughs in this book. My favourite story is one about the American chap playing Duncan in Macbeth , listening with appropriate pity and concern while a wounded soldier gives his account of a battle and then cheerfully calling out: 'Go get him, surgeons!' (it should of course be: 'Go, get him surgeons!'). And she reminds us of that old gag loved by Spike Milligan that reworks a sentimental song lyric into a domestic inquiry with one stroke of a comma - 'What is this thing called, love?' She tells - while we're on the subject of commas (sorry, again, about these dashes Lynne) - a marvellous story about New Yorker editor Harold Ross, who liked to put commas in far-flung places, rather in the spirit of a British mountaineer scattering the Union flag in remote corners of the Himalayas.

...

Lynne Truss's book is (stay with this sentence, and remember the function of punctuation is to 'tango the reader into the pauses, inflections, continuities and connections that the spoken word would convey') as much an argument for clear thinking as it is a pedantic defence of obsolete conventions of written language. Well. Done. Lynne!!!!!!!

Extract from "The Guardian" site, Nigel Williams review of Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,6903,1080732,00.html

The letter F has come in for some close scrutiny lately, thanks to the editors of the Dictionary of Old English (DOE) project at the University of Toronto.

Researchers on the renowned lexicographic project that covers the English language from 600 to 1150 AD found a heavy preponderance of "for" compounds such as forgive and forgotten. "It seemed like there was this ever-expanding list of compounds starting with 'for,'" says Professor Antonette di Paolo Healey, DOE editor. "It took us by surprise." Another unexpected finding involved the commonly used modern English phrase "to be on fire," she notes.

The expression, long believed to have originated in Middle English, was discovered in an Old English quotation.

The basic structure of Modern English and some of its vocabulary are derived from this earliest period of our language when the alphabet had only 22 letters, notes di Paolo Healey. "Language is a conveyor of culture and, through it, we have a better understanding of our social, political and intellectual institutions. It reminds us where we came from or, in Robertson Davies' words, tells us what's bred in the bone."

Extract from the "Eurika Alerts" site, article by Professor Antonette di Paolo Healey

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-10/uot-oed102903.php

In a 1775 play, Mrs. Malaprop made statements such as "She's as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile." "Malapropism" has become a noun meaning confusion of a word with one with a similar sound.

In a hilarious yet benign example, Peter Grace, at a Knights of Malta dinner with President Reagan and 900 members of the Catholic hierarchy, said "Everybody who's for abortion was at one time themselves a feces. And that includes all of you out there. You were once a feces. . . ."

Gail Sheehy, in a Vanity Fair profile of George W., says she believes that he is dyslexic, and reports that experts and family friends suggest that he is "dyslexic to the point of near-illiteracy."

Affliction or not, gaffes by officials in high places invite ridicule. George W. Bush commits language abuse with regularity. Americans need a president who can speak clearly, if not eloquently, and won't need Bushese-to-English translators when meeting with foreign leaders who might not understand what he meant when he said "hold this nation hostile" instead of "hold this nation hostage."

"We want them [teachers] to know how to teach the science of reading. In order to make sure there's not this kind of federal cufflink." [handcuff]

"The point is, this is a way to help inoculate me about what has come and is coming."

"Well, I think if you say you're going to do something and don't do it, that's trustworthiness."

"When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were," he said. "It was us vs. them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they're there."

"We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile.''

On abortion: "States should have the right to enact reasonable laws and restrictions particularly to end the inhumane practice of ending a life that otherwise could live." "I'm gonna talk about the ideal world, Chris. I've readI understand reality. If you're asking me as the president, would I understand reality, I do."

"I think it's important for those of us in a position of responsibility to be firm in sharing our experiences, to understand that the babies out of wedlock is a very difficult chore for mom and baby alike. ... And, you know, hopefully, condoms will work, but it hasn't worked."

"When I'm talking about when I'm talking about myself, and when he's talking about myself, all of us are talking about me."

"I think anybody who doesn't think I'm smart enough to handle the job is underestimating."

"Laura and I really don't realize how bright our children is sometimes until we get an objective analysis."

"I hope we get to the bottom of the answer."

"This case has had full analyzation and has been looked at a lot."

"I think we agree, the past is over."

I talked to my little brother, Jeb. I haven't told this to many people. But he's the governor of I shouldn't call him my little brother my brother, Jeb, the great governor of Texas.

"Reading is the basics for all learning."

"I understand small business growth. I was one."

"I thought how proud I am to be standing up beside my dad. Never did it occur to me that he would become the gist [grist] for cartoonists."

"If you're sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign."

"I'm less I pontificate less, although it may be hard to tell it from this show. And I'm more interacting with people."

Will the highways on the Internet become more few?"

This is Preservation [Perseverance] Month. I appreciate preservation. It's what you do when you run for president. You gotta preserve."

"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family."

"The administration I'll bring is a group of men and women whowill not stain the house."

"This is still a dangerous world. It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mential losses."

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?"

"Gov. Bush will not stand for the subsidation of failure."

"It is incredibly presumptive [presumptuous] for somebody who has not yet."

"How many hands have I shaked?"

"The only thing I know about Slovakia [Slovenia]."

"Keep good relations with the Grecians"

"It was just inebriating [enthralling] what Midland was all about then."

"These young kids, who have become rich beyond their means [years].''

Extract from the "ProChoice" site

http://www.wcla.org/00-autumn/bushese.html

McDonald's wants Merriam-Webster to take its McJob and shove it. McDonald's CEO Jim Cantalupo is steamed that the latest edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines "McJob" as low-paying, requiring little skill, and providing little opportunity for advancement. Three years ago The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language ran a similar definition, and The Oxford English Dictionary includes "unstimulating" in the mix of descriptors branding McJobs as dead-end.

Cantalupo calls such negative definitions "a slap in the face" to American restaurant workers. Although he insists that the word is not part of the nation's vocabulary, Cantalupo admits that McJob is no stranger to restaurant trade journals. He wants everyone -- including Merriam-Webster -- to stop using it.

Merriam-Webster announced that it was sticking by its definition, which reflects the way McJob has been used for at least 17 years. Dictionary editors regularly include words far more controversial and offensive because their job is to record how the rest of us use our language, and we don't always use it politely. Jim Cantalupo isn't the first person to object to what he feels is bad language in the dictionary, nor is he the first to tell lexicographers how to define their words. For example, in 1872 A.S. Solomons protested G. & C. Merriam's definition of the verb "jew" as "to cheat." And in 1997 a grass-roots protest insisted that Merriam-Webster drop the word "nigger" from the dictionary. The NAACP joined that protest, calling for the dictionary to remove any reference to race in the word's definition.

extract from "The Chronicle Review (http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i17/17b01401.htm)

It's always pleasant to go carol-singing, or carols-singing, with The Pedants' Association, formerly The Pedants Association, originally The Pedant's Association. I first joined ten years ago with the long-term aim of attracting the requisite number of votes in order to change its title to The Association of Pedants, thus rendering the apostrophe redundant, but Rome wasn't built in a day. In fact, far from it: Rome was built over a period of a good many centuries. Indeed, the last time I paid it a visit, I noticed a great deal of building work still in progress.

Extract from "The Spectator", article by Craig Brown,

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old§ion=current&issue=2003-12-13&id=3833

He studied geology (at Oxford, of course) and worked as a foreign correspondent, but now the prolific Simon Winchester contents himself with writing books somewhat faster than I can read them. In an airport bookshop last month I saw two of his titles I'd never heard of and his history of the Krakatoa eruption sits unread on my bedside table, glaring reprovingly.

His latest, however, demanded immediate attention. Subtitled The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary, it takes its name from that project's noble ambition: to provide a "full-length, illustrated biography" of every word - in use, archaic and obsolete - in the English language.

The undertaking that Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin called "the greatest enterprise of its kind in history" has engrossed Winchester before. His biggest seller, The Surgeon of Crowthorne (published in the United States as The Professor and the Madman) concerned the prodigious contribution to the OED of William Minor, a American killer incarcerated in a Berkshire asylum.

Extract from "The New Zealand Herald", article by Peter Calder

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/entertainmentstorydisplay.cfm?storyID=3538723&thesection=entertainment&thesubsection=books&thesecondsubsection=reviews

It can be a challenge to get at what sets a dictionary apart from its peers. First, you have to move beyond the marked family resemblance (thumb index tabs, speckled pages, and a preference for the name Webster), the swaggering jacket copy ("The most useful dictionary you can own," "The most up-to-date dictionary available," "America's favorite dictionary," etc.), and the shrink-wrap put in place to encourage you and your grubby hands to judge a book by its cover alone. Then you must read indefatigably through scads of introductory material and reference supplements, weigh the merits of different line drawings of jerboas and lazy tongs and the like, and, above all, look up words you know over and over again. I, unencumbered by gainful employment and needing to be kept off the streets, am the very definition of a person up for this challenge.

Extract from MSN's "Slate" site, article by YiLing Chen-Josephson

http://slate.msn.com/id/2091949/

If you think "booty" is what babies wear on their feet and "peeps" are sounds that chickens make, the dictionary of teen slang may provide you with the knowledge to be "down."

Students at Berkeley High in California have, literally, written the book on teen slang - an effort good enough to be cited by Webster's dictionary.

A kid demonstrated the following rap for CBS News Correspondent Tracy Smith's Study Hall report: "I'm not trying to see bs, I'm just trying to spit a rhyme for CBS. My rhymes are sick. They come out clean when I'm spittin' 'em."

If you're not quite sure what he's saying, no worries: Smith found translators.

Teacher Rick Ayers was inspired by the way his kids would communicate. He says, "I'd hear them in the hall and they'd be verbal geniuses. They'd just be talking, talking, talking, inventing, creating."

So he had his class create a guide to their language, complete with words like "hooptie."

"Hooptie: another name for an automobile," explained one kid.

Extract from the CBS News site, article by Tracy Smith

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/12/04/earlyshow/contributors/tracysmith/main586911.shtml

"THE hyphen may be headed for extinction." That, say the editors of a new edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English, is the fate awaiting one of the standard resources of the language.  

It's nonsense, of course. It may well be true, as claimed, that the hyphen is now used only half as much as it was 10 years ago. But that tendency is not a prediction of death. (You can lose 50% every 10 years for a long time.) Hyphens will continue to exist, but are losing stragglers in the long march of the English language. The hyphen is one side of a dual problem, the other side of which is word-splitting. 

Words have to be split, because that is what happens when they get to the printer and the printer gets to the end of a line. In general, this is not much of a problem, because there are easy ways of dividing a word into two. Prefixes can be separated from the stem: "con-temporary", say.  

Extract from "The Star" site, article by Ralph Berry

http://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/story.asp?file=/2003/12/19/features/6672215&sec=features

SPRINGFIELD, Mass., Dec. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- Merriam-Webster Inc., America's leading language reference publisher, has announced the year's top ten words and definitions as culled from its popular Web site Merriam-Webster OnLine (www.Merriam-Webster.com). The 2003 Merriam-Webster's Words of the Year list is based on users' anonymous hits to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and Online Thesaurus as well as lookups on Merriam-Webster Collegiate.com (www.Merriam-WebsterCollegiate.com), a new premium site launched this July that offers exclusive online access to the new Eleventh Edition of the best-selling Merriam-Webster's Collegiate® Dictionary.

The number one word of the year, which received by a wide margin the most unexpectedly large number of user-requests, is "democracy," for which a ten- line Collegiate Dictionary definition begins: "government by the people; esp: rule of the majority." Nine more words complete the list, all of which correlate to breaking news stories and world events ranging from the war in Iraq and the SARS epidemic ("quarantine," #3) to Hurricane Isabel and even a popular Hollywood movie ("matrix," #4).

"To the surprise of some," said John M. Morse, president and publisher of Merriam-Webster, "the most frequently looked up words are not the newest words, not the latest high-tech terms, not the cool new slang. Instead, the users are most interested in exploring full definitions for words cropping up in current media headlines or in other kinds of daily reading and conversation-not so much new words as newly popular words."

"By tracking the words people are looking up on Merriam-Webster OnLine, and by paying careful attention to the thousands of e-mails we receive each year from visitors to our sites," said Morse, "we are developing a better idea of what people want from reference sources. Online customer response can help lead our editorial staff to make adjustments in revisions of print dictionaries."

Extract from the "Yahoo News" site

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/031217/new019_1.html

From Mr. Tommy Tadger, using a yahoo.com address:
Dear Mr. Carillo: I enjoy your column, catching it on the occasions that time allows me to browse in your direction. Couple of things have drawn me to type these...not really criticisms, merely friendly observations. Japan aside, in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, and India, the vast majority of the population and centres of education use British English as a consequence of their heritage. China is a more mixed bag, and I'm not entirely sure about Indonesia, but among your ASEAN partners, British English remains dominant.

[Regarding how American English and British English use some prepositions differently ("Looking more closely at our dictionaries," Series #300, Dec. 10, 2003),] my wily old Cambridge tutor would have suggested, when quizzed on his usage: "Why should I live on a quiet street if I live in a country?" Finally, although British and American versions are conjoined twins with the same heart, who in their right mind would prefer the American accent over the British one when delivered by the Filipino vocal chord?

Dear Tommy: You're absolutely correct in observing that Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Brunei, and India use British English, but we have to recognize that it isn't British English but American English that's preeminent today as the global language for business, entertainment, and education. Thus, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, possibly Thailand, and the giant that's Mainland China are now all learning their English frenetically, American-style. Together with the Philippines (which has not very seriously taken English as its second language these past few decades), they comprise a much bigger geographical territory and population than all the Asian British-English-using countries combined. And they all know that love it or hate it, American English is simply the best medium for taking full advantage of the globalization of knowledge and trade opportunities.

Spoken English, of course, is an altogether different matter. Regional variations in English accent, whether of the British English or American English variety, are simply too numerous and confusing. My personal preference is for the spoken English that I learned as I went along in life. It doesn't manifest the Received Pronunciation of the British or the Cockney accent of its many speakers elsewhere in the Commonwealth; neither does it have the heavy drawl of some Americans nor the sometimes comic lingual convolutions of some Asian and European speakers. My Filipino-style spoken English may not be music to the Englishman's or American's ear, but it rarely fails to connect with the English-speakers I meet both in my country and abroad.

Extract frpm "The Manila Times" site, article by Jose A. Carillo

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2003/dec/20/yehey/top_stories/20031220top14.html

For Torrey Pines High School English teacher Jill Brackman, instant-messaging technology is something of a double-edged sword.

She uses the chat software to hold virtual office hours some evenings from home. Students can check in with quick questions, and she can respond just as quickly.  But that advantage is outweighed by the technology's downside, the teacher says.

Life without an open chat window is unimaginable to a generation of young students.

Chats during homework. Chats while watching TV. Text chats on the cell phone. Known by its acronym, IM, instant messaging is all about quick, concise written conversation - and that means shorthand. "LOL" instead of "laughing out loud." "BRB" instead of "Be right back." "L8R" instead of "Later."

This culture of casual shorthand chats - some would say grammatical anarchy - is spilling over into student essays. In an informal school poll of English teachers, Brackman and others complained of seeing "U" instead of "you" and other shortcuts from young writers.

"Instant messaging definitely impacts in different ways, primarily negative," Brackman said.

Extract from the "Sign On San Diego" site, article by Jonathan Sidener

Chelski, speed dating and espresso sex are among the words and phrases which entered the English language in the past year, according to a study.

Others which have grown to become widely used are Sars, fat tax and portion distortion.

They are among examples identified by The Collins Bank of English, a computer system which sifts more than 150 million words a year to pick out emerging trends.

The system looks through printed words in newspapers and magazines and spoken words from television.

Publishers Collins uses words identified by the computer for possible inclusion in future editions of its dictionaries.

Words associated with the emerging threat from terrorism and the war in Iraq are among the list. They include "axis of evil" - the term coined by the US government to describe Iran, Iraq and North Korea.

Sex had a strong influence on new words and phrases, including "hasbian" for a former lesbian who becomes heterosexual or bisexual, "sperm bandit" for a woman who has intercourse solely in order to become pregnant and Espresso sex - quick sex with a partner with whom one is only slightly familiar.

Extract from the Ananova site

The Dialectizer takes text or other web pages and instantly creates parodies of them! Try it out by selecting a dialect, then entering a URL or English text below. If you have questions about what The Dialectizer does or how it does it, please see the "Information" section toward the bottom of this page.

Urban Dictionary is a slang dictionary with your definitions. Define your world.

The inventive language created by doctors the world over to insult their patients - or each other - is in danger of becoming extinct.

So says a doctor who has spent four years charting more than 200 colourful examples. 

Medicine is a profession already overflowing with acronyms and technical terms, and doctors over the years have invented plenty of their own. 

However, Dr Adam Fox, who works at St Mary's Hospital in London as a specialist registrar in its child allergy unit, says that far fewer doctors now annotate notes with acronyms designed to spell out the unsayable truth about their patients. 

The increasing rate of litigation means that there is a far higher chance that doctors will be asked in court to explain the exact meaning of NFN (Normal for Norfolk), FLK (Funny looking kid) or GROLIES (Guardian Reader Of Low Intelligence in Ethnic Skirt). 

Dr Fox recounts the tale of one doctor who had scribbled TTFO - an expletive expression roughly translated as "Told To Go Away" - on a patient's notes.

Extract from the BBC site

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3159813.stm

Red-faced officials at General Motors in Canada have been forced to think of a new name for their latest model after discovering it was a slang word for masturbation.

GM officials said they had been unaware that LaCrosse was a term for self-gratification among teenagers in French-speaking Quebec.

Extract from the BBC site

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3208501.stm

Last year the editors of the American Heritage Dictionary released the long-awaited fourth edition of the American Heritage College Dictionary, and to mark the occasion they compiled a list titled "100 Words That Every High School Graduate Should Know." A senior editor of the dictionary, Steven Kleinedler, explained, "This list is a benchmark against which graduates-and those long out of high school-can measure themselves. If you are able to use these words correctly, you are likely to have a superior command of the language." The words have been printed on a poster, and I've had it taped to my wall for several months now.

In some ways the list is a curious one. A number of the words clearly draw on recent news (euro, reparation, impeach), but it isn't always clear why certain others were deemed urgent enough to make the cut (facetious, gauche, sanguine). There are numerous words involving science (gamete, kinetic, quasar), politics (enfranchise, gerrymander, loquacious), and publishing (bowdlerize, expurgate, plagiarize), but none involving religion (except nonsectarian). Lexicon is on the list, presumably ex officio.

Extract from "The Atlantic Online" site, article by Cullen Murphy

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/03/murphy.htm

  Finally, in the 1980s, a sixth meaning was popularized (chiefly
by the game Trivial Pursuit):  the second full moon in a month.  The
earliest reference cited for this is The Maine Farmers' Almanac for
1937.  Rumour has it that when there were two full moons in a
calendar month, calendars would put the first in red, the second in
blue.

     [In September 2003 Matti Lamprhey posted a message to the news-
     group with further information and discussion of this topic.]

Extract from the alt.usage.english site

http://www.alt-usage-english.org/

WORDS I - Etymologist or not, when a guy writes a book that explores the origins and development of "dirty" words -- and there are words in this book not even a referee has heard -- he can expect a broad range of responses.

Since the publication this fall of The Lover's Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex, Mark Morton, assistant professor of English at the University of Winnipeg, and a fellow word junky, has experienced "many reactions from friend and foe alike -- some of them nice, some of them not so nice."

Well, surprise, surprise.

"Actually," the personable Morton says, "some of them were surprising. My wife's grandmother, who is in her eighties, really enjoyed the book. She thought it was a hoot -- except for one thing. She told me the chapter on the penis was too long and too hard."

On the other hand the author's mother, while she was delighted with her son's previous book -- Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities -- has had to "make adjustments" to this one.

Morton suspects his Mom is not alone in that regard.

Far from it.

"I'm sure that would be the case with most people who buy the book," he says. "I think it's the kind of book that won't be seen on the coffee table -- the way the other one was."

In 2001, Morton -- who was born and raised on a farm near Weyburn, Saskatchewan, and educated at the University of Regina and the University of Toronto -- decided that, having already written about food, he would now write about sex.

Extract from "The Free Republic" site, article by Nick Miliokas

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1040322/posts

I began this project after I looked one day for a free dictionary of word origins online and found that there was none. You could subscribe to the Oxford English Dictionary for $550 a year. There were free dictionaries with definitions, some lists of slang words and their sources, and some sites that listed a few dozen of the strangest etymologies of English words. But there was no comprehensive public list of the words we use every day -- words like the and day -- that told what they used to be before we got them.

For some reason no university has seen fit to shackle its graduate students to the cyber-mill, grinding out an online etymology dictionary. So I decided to do it for them. I also did this to increase my understanding of the language, and its ancestors and relatives. As a writer and editor with an amateur's passion for linguistics, I took this as a joy ride more than drudgery. And I know so much more useless trivia than I did when I started (applaud is related to explode; three people can have a dialogue; and if anyone calls you feisty, slug him).

I hope this map of the wheel-ruts of English will be useful or amusing to a lot of people. It's not meant to be pedantic: These are not definitions; they're explanations of what our words meant 600 or 2,000 years ago. Think of it like looking at pictures of your friends' parents when they were your age. People will continue to use words as they will, finding new or wider meanings for old words and coining new ones to fit new situations. In fact, this list is a testimony to that process.

Extract from the "Etymology Online" site

http://www.etymonline.com/

To wax in this instance is to grow (as the moon does when it isn't waning). The word is related to the German "wachsen" meaning much the same. Nostalgic originally meant homesick but now generally refers to a longing for bygone days.

So - "having an increasing longing for times past".

---------------------

I'll wax etymologic for a moment. The origins of 'wax,' grow bigger or greater, increase, go way back to the Indo-European (3000-4000 B.C.) base 'woks-,' a variant of which has given English 'auction' (as the sale proceeds the price offered increases) and 'augment.' By the time of 'Beowulf (about 725) it had become in Old English 'weaxan,' to increase, grow, and sometime before ~1100 it became 'wexen' and finally sometime in the 12th century 'wax.' In Old Frisian (before 1500) it was 'waxa,' to increase grow; in Old Saxon (before 1100) it was 'wahsan'; in Middle Dutch (1100-1500) and modern Dutch 'wassen'; in Old High German (before 1100) 'wahsan' (modern German 'wachsen'), in Old Icelandic (before 1500) 'vaxa,' etc.

Extracts from the "Wordwizard" site

http://www.wordwizard.com

UK broadcasters are often accused of promoting obscenity through the increased use of bad language on TV. However, new research from the University of Warwick reveals that the language of public name-calling, or 'street theatre', in early modern England was full of foul sexual insults that are far more lewd than today's broadcast media - and women were the main offenders.

Professor Bernard Capp's book 'When Gossips Meet', tracks the history of poor and 'middling' women from the mid 1500s to the 1700s, to reveal that gossipmongering and heated public exchanges were weapons used by women to wield power and influence in a male dominated society where they were often excluded.

Public name-calling by women aimed to demoralise an adversary, trigger damaging gossip throughout the neighbourhood, and turn public opinion against the alleged offender.

Allegations usually attacked a female adversary's sexual reputation. Prostitution was viewed as far worse than fornication, and the charge undermined social as well as moral standing. Court papers reveal the term 'whore' as the most common insult over several centuries.

"Massive overuse inevitably weakened the impact of 'whore' as a term of abuse, but speakers were able to draw on a rich lexicon of synonyms, such as jade, quean, baggage, harlot, drab, filth, flirt, gill, trull, dirtyheels, draggletail, flap, naughty-pack, slut, squirt, and strumpet, generally heightened by adjectives such as arrant, base, brazenfaced, or scurvy."

Extract from the "Eureka Alert" site, article by Professor Bernard Capp, Department of History, University of Warwick

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-10/uow-lmf101503.php

Surf Rage - a good starting point would be teaching people how to speak and write English properly!

"Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 is a new program that streamlines the process of gathering, using, and sharing information through rich, dynamic business forms." Huh? I am particularly puzzled by the bit after "rich" what are "dynamic business forms"?

Burton Holmes, Extraordinary Traveler (I think that really ought to be "traveller extraordinary" - there is a world of difference between the two!)

Honoring the Trans-Siberian Railroad (That should of course be honouring and railway, but never mind)

Did I really just hear the DA announcing that Michael Jackson could have his passport back use the "word" representationalised? It certainly sounded like it.

Extracts from the "Bifurcated Rivets" site

http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Lindsay/weblog/latest.html

From Jane Ann Morrison's December 15 column in the Review-Journal: "A number of Democrats said that Reid doesn't give a rat's patootie about the party's well-being at the state level ..."

Our copy of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary-the 10th editon-lacks an entry for "patootie," but the ever-helpful American Slang dictionary provides two definitions so at odds with each other that one closes its cover shocked at Ms. Morrison's inexact use of the language. Definition 1: buttocks. Definition 2: sweetheart.

So, which is it, Jane Ann? "Harry Reid doesn't give a rat's ass" or "Harry Reid doesn't give a rat's boyfriend/girlfriend/life partner"? The difference, as you can see, is tremendous, and given the vital subject matter-the Democratic party's well-being at the state level-we think a little more clarity is in order.

Extract from "The Las Vegas Weekly" site

http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/2003/12/18/gray.html

Mark W. Freeman, who writes his newspaper column as the Washington Country Curmudgeon (see Wangle/Wrangle in the Archives, below) e-mailed to depose as follows:

"I deplore the use of 'hone' for 'home,' as in 'the critic was honing in on his target.' What I deplore even more is the tendency of dictionaries to accept usages such as this on the ground that 'lots of people make this mistake.' Lots of people say 'chimbly' for 'chimney,' but because they aren't TV news anchors, the dictionaries haven't accepted this. Yet."

And not soon, one hopes. "Home in on," meaning aim at, narrow a field to, and apparently evolving from the homing performed by pigeons (and then airplanes and missiles), certainly seems more logical than a phrase that evokes a razor strop.

Extract from the "Columbia Journalism Review" site, article by Evan Jenkins

http://www.cjr.org/tools/lc/

I find myself continuously explaining my turns of phrase to folks outside Ireland, especially when I say things that are meant as innocent humour or irony, but they are misconstrued as anger or offensive behaviour. Although Ireland's by now (in)famous diaspora have reached all corners of the globe, it is only now that the folks left at home are starting communicate directly to the outside world, on our own terms, especially because of the 'net. And we of course have our own dialect, Hiberno English, which can tip conversations in great cacophonies of confusion.

For reason best explained by historians, in Ireland we speak English as a first language, and so the usual slang of that language follows; going out and getting pissed in Dublin or London means doesn't entail anger (theoretically anyway) - but at this side of the Atlantic it certainly does mean getting ossified, lubricated, langers or just plain drunk, but in a particularly Irish context, it can be great craic.

Craic, incidentally, isn't cocaine, it's a simple Irish word that is a distillation of the energetic and insane atmosphere of a socially successful night on the town, specifically, in a pub. An individual reputed for his or her good humour and charming wit may be referred to as being 'great craic'. And no person ever encountered by yours truly was misfortunate enough to make an ass of themselves, unless they were providing donkey impressions, but I have had the ill-luck to fail in my avoidance of several complete arseholes. Or perhaps that's a little harsh, they were certainly amadáns (fools), eejits (idiots) or gobshites at the very least. Gob literally means 'beak' , but is more pejoratively used to mean mouth. I'll refrain from assailing anyone's intelligence by explaining the implications of this rather subtle term

Extract from the "blatherNet" site

http://www.blather.net/shitegeist/000195.htm

Bunnell says on songs like "Horse With No Name" and "Tin Man" he used poetic license and very often broke the rules of grammar. He says he only has three minutes to tell a story and he's always mushed up the language.

He admits he doesn't talk that way in real life and that as he got older, his English got better in his songs. Still, he says he is sorry to all the school teachers who pulled out their hair because fans sang his songs.

Extract from the "ABC News" site

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/news/entertainment/121703_APent_english.html

Are you reading a Web page or a web page?

A few thousand years ago, we wouldn't have given it a second thought. There were no computers, of course. There were also no lowercase letters in the roman alphabet, which some people still call the Roman alphabet.

SENTENCES LOOKED LIKE THIS, although they were in Latin not English (TOTUS SCRIPTOR VIDEOR HAC - a quick and loose translation that wouldn't impress many language scholars, but at least it gives you the general drift.)

Coming up with a more flexible system made reading easier. But in some ways it also made writing and editing harder.

You have to stop now to make choices. Well, you don't actually have to. But you probably want to if your standards are higher than, say, goofball531@hotmail.com who seems to think that "spam" stands for Spelling and Punctuation Are Meaningless.

Which brings us back to the opening question. Is this a Web page or a web page? Last week, CBC News Online would have said a "Web page."

But we've made a few changes around here, and now it's a "web page" - a decision that may prompt e-mail, also known in some circles as E-mail, E mail, email, and Uhmail.

Extract from "The CBC" site, article by Blair Shewchuk

http://www.cbc.ca/news/indepth/words/internet_i.html

The H stands for Harold, as in, "Our Father, who art in heaven, Harold be thy name" (snort).

Actually, I've heard numerous explanations for the H over the years. The first is that it stands for "Holy," as in Jesus Holy Christ, a common enough blasphemy in the South, abridged to H by fast-talking Northerners. Other colorful Southern epithets include Jesus Hebe Christ and Jesus Hebrew Christ, which abbreviate the same way. The drawback of this account is that it is so boring I can barely type it without falling asleep. Luckily, the other theories are more entertaining:

(1) It stands for "Haploid." This is an old bio major joke, referring to the unique (not to say immaculate) circumstances of Christ's conception. Having no biological father, J.C. was shortchanged in the chromosome department to the tune of one half. Ingenious, I'll admit, but whimsy has no place in a serious investigation such as this.

(2) It recalls the H in the IHS logo emblazoned on much Christian paraphernalia. IHS dates from the earliest years of Christianity, being an abbreviation of "Jesus" in classical Greek characters. The Greek pronunciation is "Iesous," with the E sound being represented by the character eta, which looks like an H. When the symbol passed to Christian Romans, for whom an H was an H, the unaccountable character eventually became accepted as Jesus's middle initial.

(3) Finally, a reader makes the claim that the H derives from the taunting Latin inscription INRH that was supposedly tacked on the cross by Roman soldiers: Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Hebrei (Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Hebrews). Trouble is, the inscription is usually given as INRI: Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum (J.C., King of the Jews).

Extract from "The Straight Dope" site

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_033

bling bling
(n) Jewelry, derived from the sound it makes

This slang term was added to most dictionaries recently

Other meanings:

bling bling : English slang and colloquialisms used in the United Kingdom

bling bling : Totally Unofficial Rap

Bling Bling : A Prisoner's Dictionary

Extract from the "Diamond Talk" site

http://www.diamondtalk.com/forums/showthread.php?jpid=347293

This thesis presents and defends semantic explications for a number of swearwords commonly used in Australian English. Its focus is on different constructions which can be conveyed using the three lexical forms shit, fuck and cunt. Contrary to the popular belief that swearwords are "meaningless", it is shown that each of these swearwords can be used to convey a number of specific meanings. These meanings are sometimes related, but each needs to be defined independently if similarities and differences between terms are to be precisely captured. Aspects of meaning discussed include the contrast between the exclamations Shit! and Fuck!, the common adjectival form fucking, the relationship of the referential term cunt to other uses, the contrast between fucking and making love, and the meaning conveyed by semi-metaphorical forms such as to kick the shit out of someone. The method of semantic representation adopted is the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach advocated by Anna Wierzbicka and others. The explications presented here have a number of implications. Relevant issues examined include the relationship between referential uses of swearwords and the other meanings which they convey, the semantic importance of the consciousness of "phonetic form" in swearing, and the role of prototypes in the semantics of swearwords. The semantic characterisation of the concepts "swearing" and "swearword" is also discussed.

Extract from the "Gusworld" site, thesis abstract by Angus Kidman

http://www.gusworld.com.au/nrc/thesis/intro.htm

Red

~ RED  akin to CRIMSON or     sug> CARDINAL
       RUBY  VERMILION        sug> CARMINE
  FLUSH  BLOODY  RUDDY        see> ROSE
  SANGUINE  PINK  PINKO       see> RUBY
  id+ | FLESHY |
  sp  CARNE = FLESH is CARMIN
  eng CARNAL implies the color of
      FRESH BLOOD or          sug> TINGE
  HUMAN LIP or TONGUE         sug> PAINT
  note RED is a COLOR         sug> HUE
  sp  COLOR         = COLORING
      COLORADO        RED
  ukr KRASKA          RED       sug> COLORLESS
  rus KRASNO          OK        sug> DISCOLOR
  gr  ERUTHROS        RED       sug> ERYTHEMA
  skt      RUDHIRAS   RED       sug> RUTHENIAN below

Extract from the "Pandora Word Box",  W. Wertelecki

http://www.consultsos.com/pandora/red.htm

This is a collection of gay slang that you may hear around the way. Much of this lingo may not be wide spread, or something you'd hear in communities where gays are not the majority.

I apologize for any of this jargon that may offend you. I realize that some terms may be abrasive, or cruel, which is why a lot of them are labeled as "used in gay bashing." They are not presented to educate those who gay bash, but rather to raise your awareness, so that you know what something may specifically mean. However, if something is derogatory and not identified as such, please [email] and I will update it.

Extract from the "GSAGlobal" site

http://gsaglobal.net/jargon/?u=a.html

CarolindaCool's Distance Learning Room on Paltalk

http://www.paltalk.com

A light-hearted look at some differences between English as spoken on both sides of the Atlantic. Spelling and pronunciation differences are not included.

Extract from the "KryssTal" site, page by Kryss Katsiavriades

http://www.krysstal.com/ukandusa.html

We are often asked about the origins of "The Old Bill" or "The Bill" as slang names for the police. The simple answer is that no one really knows for sure. Over the years at least 13 different possibilities have been proposed, as follows:

1. "Old Bill" was King William IV, whose constables were an early form of police. (It is often said erroneously that he was on the throne when the police were founded. Actually he did not succeed George IV until 1830)
2. The play "The Custom of the Country" written by John Fletcher in 1619 has constables of the watch refer to themselves as 'us peacemakers and all our bill of authority'.
3. Constables of the watch were sometimes nicknamed for the bills, or billhooks they carried as weapons.
4. Kaiser Wilhelm I of Prussia visited England around the time in 1864 when the police uniform changed from top hat and swallowtail coat to helmet and tunic. Such 'Prussian militarism' may have led to the police being nicknamed after the first (and today less remembered) Kaiser Bill.
5. The 'old bill' was, in Victorian times, a bill presumed to be presented by the police for a bribe to persuade them to turn a blind eye to some nefarious activity.
6. New laws for the police to enforce all come from bills passed through Parliament
7. "Old Bill" might refer to Bill Bailey of the music hall song 'Won't You Come Home...?' used in conjunction with a pun on the Central Criminal Court at the Old Bailey.
8. In the 1860s there was a Sergeant Bill Smith in Limehouse. He was a popular character and people used to ask after 'Old Bill'.
9. Many police officers wore authoritarian-looking "Old Bill" moustaches like that adorning a famous W.W.1 cartoon character 'the wily old soldier in the trenches' by Bruce Bairnsfather.
10. In 1917 the government used Bairnsfather's character in posters and advertisements putting over wartime messages under the heading "Old Bill says...". For this campaign the character was dressed in a special constable's uniform.
11. The original vehicles used by the Flying Squad all had the registration letters BYL, so the squad became known as 'the Bill'.
12. The London County Council at one time registered all police, fire and ambulance vehicles with the letters BYL
13. According to old Etonian illegal gaming club organizer and author the late Robin Cook ('Derek Raymond'), 'old bill' is a racing term for an outsider or unknown quantity. From the point of view of the underworld, police would be outsiders

Despite all these suggestions, the earliest documented usage traced by the Metropolitan Police Historical Museum is from 1970 and 'Partridge's Dictionary of Slang'. Without giving citations the book dates "Old Bill" from the 1950s "or perhaps earlier". So the term may possibly be post W.W.2.

Extract from the "Metropolitan Police" site

http://www.met.police.uk/history/oldbill.htm

Except of course those woeful individuals who exercised their right to free speech by dumping on the printed version of the site (Dictionary of Playground Slang) at Amazon UK. If any of you have a few minutes to spare we'd really appreciate your nipping over to the site and giving us a more balanced review.... pretty please??

Moving on, the ODPS has had a couple of bursts of publicity in the UK and Australia lately which have produced several hundred new words or so all of which have been dutifully uploaded - but of course as always we still need more so if your friends and relatives haven't been bored to buggery by repeated requests for old or new slang words then now is the time to do it. If you don't I'll have to spend time with my family over Xmas and that'll never do!

What else is new. Well not a lot really. You'll see we added a section of Rugby Songs, chants and similar called 'Hymns and Arias'. If you have alternate words, if you have more songs, if you'd like to record MP3's of yourself (and friends?) singing a few choice verses... send them on in and we'll load them up!!

We're also in the process of working out a few other ideas for the site such as a mailing list in addition to the proposed forums. If anyone likes the idea of a mailing list please let me know and I'll set one up. We were thinking of including, for example, all the words that come in without meanings or with obscure references to meanings we can't get to grips with. This way you can have a direct input into the content of the site.Except of course those woeful individuals who exercised their right to free speech by dumping on the printed version of the site (Dictionary of Playground Slang) at Amazon UK. If any of you have a few minutes to spare we'd really appreciate your nipping over to the site and giving us a more balanced review.... pretty please??

Moving on, the ODPS has had a couple of bursts of publicity in the UK and Australia lately which have produced several hundred new words or so all of which have been dutifully uploaded - but of course as always we still need more so if your friends and relatives haven't been bored to buggery by repeated requests for old or new slang words then now is the time to do it. If you don't I'll have to spend time with my family over Xmas and that'll never do!

What else is new. Well not a lot really. You'll see we added a section of Rugby Songs, chants and similar called 'Hymns and Arias'. If you have alternate words, if you have more songs, if you'd like to record MP3's of yourself (and friends?) singing a few choice verses... send them on in and we'll load them up!!

We're also in the process of working out a few other ideas for the site such as a mailing list in addition to the proposed forums. If anyone likes the idea of a mailing list please let me know and I'll set one up. We were thinking of including, for example, all the words that come in without meanings or with obscure references to meanings we can't get to grips with. This way you can have a direct input into the content of the site.

Extract from the ODPS site

http://www.odps.org/

The "birth" of what eventually became the OED is generally dated to late 1857, when Richard Chenevix Trench read his paper "On some Deficiencies in our English Dictionaries" to the Philological Society. However, it is worth noting that on 27 May 1853 the Philological Society elected Frederick Furnivall as its honorary Secretary (jointly with the classicist T. H. Key). Furnivall's part in the creation of the OED is almost impossible to overstate: he was a key figure in turning the Philological Society's attention to the subject of English dictionaries even before Trench read his paper; he was appointed to one of the Committees set up by the Society to oversee work on the proposed Dictionary; when the first editor, Herbert Coleridge, died in 1861, Furnivall took over, and organized the work of the readers and sub-editors for some years; even after the appointment of James Murray as editor in 1879 he never ceased to work for the Dictionary, not least by sending in thousands of quotation slips, many of them cut from his daily newspapers. Shown here is a cutting taken by Furnivall from the Daily Chronicle of 2 February 1910, only a few months before he died. Such quotations are still being made use of by today's OED editors: the latest OED Online update includes a new entry for the word must-have, and Furnivall's quotation is included.

Extract from the OED site

http://www.oed.com/

January 6, 2003: Weapons Of Mass Destruction Dominate Words Of The Year 2002

The grim forebodings of the past year were reflected in the American Dialect Society's choice of weapons of mass destruction and its abbreviation WMD as word (or phrase) of the year 2002.

In the 13th annual vote among members and friends of the society, conducted this time in Atlanta Jan. 3 during the society's annual meeting, weapons of mass destruction received 38 votes of the approximately 60 cast. Vote numbers are approximate because voting was by show of hands.

Extract from the American Dialect Society site

http://www.americandialect.org/woty.html#1990

FOR THIS year's Feedback competition, readers were invited to invent a new scientific word that we need and define it in an appropriately pompous way.

The competition attracted more entries than any previous one, and the standard was impressively high. The first shortlist of potential winners contained more than 50 entries, and whittling it down to just 10 was quite a challenge.

We were interested, too, to note that in a competition about word definitions, readers embraced such a variety of definitions of the word "pompous" - including, in some cases, the short and the pithy.

But who are we to argue? The word's the thing - and here, in alphabetical order, are the 10 winning neologisms, chosen with the judicious help of the New Scientist staff.

Coyotus Interruptus A momentary suspension of the law of gravity, usually accompanied by the sudden realisation of impending gravitational acceleration. The term is derived from the name of its discoverer, Wile E. Coyote (Carnivorous vulgaris), who often observed the phenomenon when, in pursuit of Road Runner (Accelerati incredibilis), he was propelled at high velocity from a precipice of sedimentary rock by an apparatus of his own contrivance or by a commercial product, such as Fleet-Foot Jet-Propelled Tennis Shoes (ACME, Inc).

Jacqueline Jaeger Houtman, Madison, Wisconsin, US

Demiverse We only have eyes in the fronts of our heads, so the existence of a whole universe is an unwarranted assumption. The known fact that people turn round and walk into you after buying their ticket demonstrates that there is only a demiverse, and that there is a delay in the unobserved half re-establishing itself.

Clive Bashford, London, UK

Encyclopediatrician A person dealing with the knowledge of all branches of children's stuff.

Extract from the "New Scientist" site

http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opfeedback.jsp?id=ns242699#21

In about eight weeks, the nomination will be won by the candidate who manages to take the lead in the last national Gallup poll before the Iowa caucuses. So says the Mayer predictive model of primary campaigns. This remarkably accurate model has predicted all but one contest (Hart in 1988 for obvious reasons) since 1980.

As I said in my essay on the press-politics of primary campaigns, the press portrays this stable political process as unstable, as a horse-race with an uncertain outcome.

Below I have reproduced a typical horse-race story from the Associated Press and analyzed its structure, rhetoric, and political utility:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- His staff shaken but voters not stirred, Democrat John Kerry has adopted a sharp shift in rhetoric and tactics, including 24-hour campaign sprints and a full-court press in Iowa.

In the rhetoric of journalism, reporters must accomplish two goals with an introductory paragraph, commonly called a "lede." They must answer as many of the journalist's questions (who, what, when, where, why, and how) as possible and practical. And the lede must be catchy, i.e. written in a way to draw the reader into the story. The narrative bias plays a big role in an "effective" lede. A skilled reporter will draw a reader into the story with drama, usually portrayed as contention between two "sides." A lede may be judged all the better if the reporter can bring the paragraph alive with figurative language, i.e. various tropes and schemes.

The lede of this article shows what happens when reporters/editors try too hard to create drama and interest. First, the reporter uses antithesis with a pop-culture allusion to the way the fictional character James Bond takes his martinis. Next, the reporter editorializes in an attempt to heighten drama by characterizing Kerry's current rhetoric and tactics  as a "sharp shift." Rhetoric and tactics are nearly always used pejoratively in journalistic discourse because they are thought to indicate deception. Finally, the reporter ends his lede my mixing a metaphor--moving from martinis to hoops in one sentence.

Extract from the "Rhetorica" site, article by Andrew R. Cline

http://election.rhetorica.net/essay/how_to_read_a_campaign_horse.htm

yourDictionary, the world-wide language product and service corporation known for its popular dictionary website of the same name, today released the "Outsiders' Guide to California Recall Initiative Lingo".

"As always we've listed our word choices in alphabetical order," said Robert Beard, CEO of yourDictionary, "however, the California Election Commission has even changed alphabetical order for the purposes of the recall election. Under the assumption the Election Commission knows what it is doing, we are using its alphabetical order for our glossary."

According to Paul JJ Payack, chairman of yourDictionary, "Our California Recall Lingo Guide is an attempt to help outsiders better understand the entire scene from a linguistic perspective. As always, in California there are interesting innovations in word choice and usage that tell us something about the nature of the Recall effort."

Governator	A titled bestowed upon himself by Ahh-nold.
The Count of Bustamante	Crus Bustamante, the current Lieutenant Governor of California whose fund-raising activities, he assures us, are perfectly legal and ethical.
CAH-lee-FOR-nee-ah	The name of the state according to the Republican front-runner.
The Circus (1)	California Gubernatorial Recall Initiative with its 135 eager candidates.

Extracts from the yourDictionary.com site

http://www.yourdictionary.com/about/recall.html

SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. - 'Make no mistakes about it,' Lake Superior State University issued its 28th annual 'extreme' List of Words Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness, which the world needs 'now, more than ever.'

LSSU has been compiling the list since 1976, choosing from nominations sent from around the world. This year, words and phrases were pulled from a record 3,000 nominations. Most were sent through the school's website: http://www.lssu.edu/banished.

Word-watchers pull nominations throughout the year from everyday speech, as well as from the news, fields of education, technology, advertising, politics, and more. A committee gathers the entries and chooses the best in December. The list is released on New Year's Day.

The complete 2003 list follows:

POLITICS AND THE MEDIA

MATERIAL BREACH -- "Suggests an obstetrical complication that pulls a physician off the golf course," says a nominator from Washington, D.C. Sounds like contract lawyer-speak rather than the world-worn parlance of war planners and diplomats. At one time, UN resolutions were violated. Violators were held in contempt. How long until treaties are ripped up in the presence of attorneys?

MUST-SEE TV -- "Must find remote. Must change channel," laments Nan Heflin from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Television once pitched entertainment. Apparently now it's taken on a greater imperative. Assumes herd mentality over program taste.

UNTIMELY DEATH -- Balky attempt to make some deaths more tragic than others. "Has anyone yet died a timely death?" asks Donald Burgess of South Pasadena, California.

BLACK ICE -- From the weather and news reports. Ice is ice. Watch your step.

Extract from the Lake Superior State University site

http://www.lssu.edu/banished/archive/2003.php

The term comes from the Skonk Works, the Kickapoo Joy Juice bootleg brewing operation in Al Capp's Li'l Abner comic strip.

Extract from the Webopedia site

http://webopedia.com/new_terms.asp

One man's gobbledegook is another's plain speaking.

The Plain English Campaign-a British pressure group that lobbies for public information to be presented in clear, straightforward language-held its annual awards on 2 December 2003. It gave its Foot In Mouth award for the most baffling statement by a public figure to the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for this: "Reports that say something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns-the ones we don't know we don't know". John Lister, the spokesman for the campaign, said: "We think we know what he means. But we don't know if we really know".

In the days since, journalists and academics have queued up to assert that Donald Rumsfeld was talking sense, moreover sense expressed in the simplest and plainest words available, ones that the Plain English Campaign should be applauding, not criticising. The trouble is, Mr Rumsfeld's statement needs work to appreciate, because he's talking philosophy. (You might argue that he left out one category, that of unknown knowns-things we know, but we don't know that we know-but that's perhaps a comment better reserved for a seminar on metacognition.) It would seem that the PEC has put its own foot in its own mouth, again. In the 2002 awards, it criticised the actor Richard Gere for a statement that was cogent, if oddly expressed, so hardly fitting an award given for "the most baffling statement by a public figure".

Runners-up in this section of the awards included California's new governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, for his comment to an interviewer that "I think that gay marriage is something that should be between a man and a woman", but that isn't baffling, just daft; the British politician Chris Patten was singled out for saying about the UK's main opposition party that "Having committed political suicide, the Conservative Party is now living to regret it", which is a nice quip, but also hardly baffling.

The best part of the awards are always the Golden Bulls for the year's worst examples of gobbledegook. These are among the winners:

The online retailer jungle.com was asked: "Do you still sell blank CDs?". The company replied: "We are currently in the process of consolidating our product range to ensure that the products that we stock are indicative of our brand aspirations. As part of our range consolidation we have also decided to revisit our supplier list and employ a more intelligent system for stock acquisition. As a result of the above certain product lines are now unavailable through jungle.com, whilst potentially remaining available from more mainstream suppliers". So that would be a "no"?

Extract from Michael Quinion's "World Wide Words" site

http://www.worldwidewords.org/index.htm

The term "Estuary English" (EE) was coined by David Rosewarne in 1984 and first described in a widely regarded article in the Times Educational Supplement. According to Rosewarne, EE is a phonetically and socially intermediate accent on the south-eastern accent continuum between Cockney and RP. What he considers to be new and most striking about EE is its increasing social acceptability. Rosewarne even goes so far as to describe EE as "the new RP".

Since the term "Estuary English" was coined, it has been discussed with increasing frequency and unreduced controversy, first by the linguistic layman and then also by professional linguists. In this discussion the term has proved as unpopular with professional linguists as it is popular with the linguistic layman. Journalists and literary authors make frequent use of the term in order to label a number of different trends, such as structural convergence of the accents of the Home Counties or the situation-related use of London variants by speakers who are otherwise speakers of RP. Linguists on the other hand are very critical of the term itself and the way it is used. Some see it as an inappropriate "shorthand" for only partly related trends, others as a new name for an old phenomenon.

The continued disagreement about EE is mostly due to the absence of systematic empirically-based socio-phonetic studies of EE in the larger context of the south-eastern accent continuum. This book is such a systematic study aiming at describing and explaining EE. It also contains a section exploring possible explanations - both socio-historical and system-internal - for the rise and shape of the socio-linguistic situation in south-eastern England today.

Extract from the University College London site

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/estuary/index.html

Maledicta Volume 13

Received Pronunciation (RP) is a form of pronunciation of the English language, usually defined as the "educated spoken English of southeastern England". It is non-rhotic, meaning that written r is pronounced only if it is followed by a vowel.

Earlier Received Pronunciation was sometimes referred to as "BBC English" (as it was traditionally used by the BBC) and as "the Queen's English". Both terms remain in use today, though less frequently than in past decades.

Many Britons abroad modify their accent to make their pronunciation closer to Received Pronunciation, in order to be better understood than if they were using their usual accent. They may also modify their vocabulary and grammar to be closer to "Standard English", for the same reason.

Changing status of Received Pronunciation

Traditionally, Received Pronunciation is the accent of English which is "the everyday speech of families of Southern English persons whose menfolk have been educated at the great public boarding schools" (Daniel Jones, English Pronouncing Dictionary, 1926), and which conveys no information about that speaker's region. For many years, the use of Received Pronunciation has been considered a mark of education by some within Britain. As a result, elitist notions have sprung up around it, and those who use it have often considered those who do not to be less educated than themselves.

There is some truth in this, however, as historically most of the best educational institutions (Oxford, Cambridge, many public schools) were located in the south-east, so anybody who was educated there would pick up the accent of their peers.

However, from the 1970s onwards, attitudes towards Received Pronunciation have been slowly changing. Today, the accents of the English regions and of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland are more likely to be considered to be on a par with Received Pronunciation. BBC reporters no longer need to, and often do not, use Received Pronunciation. Stereotypes outside the UK nevertheless persist.

The ongoing spread of Estuary English from the London metropolitan area through the whole South-East leads some people to believe that this will take the place of Received Pronunciation as the "Standard English" of the future.

The closest equivalent in the United States is the General American pronunciation. In general, US network broadcasters use the Standard Midwestern accent.

Extract from the Wikipedia site

http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation