Now, I’m a bit of a nerd and also a geek (I’m told there is a discernable difference). As such, I spend a lot of time hanging around in the corners of the internet where the spelling and grammar employed would be sufficient to make one’s eyes bleed. In these online dens of linguistic depravity, [...]
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A couple of tricky fellows for you today – and ones that are often misspelled into the bargain. It’s two-for-one day at Word du Jour! First up is one thing we can thank the artistes Bobby Brown and Britney Spears for (and if there are any others, it can’t be a very long list) their [...] Having spent a lot of my youth exploring different music, I have always had a soft spot for the Cajuns. The music of the swamps of Louisiana, USA has always seemed evocative of good times, good food and copious quantities of Bourbon. Check out the music of Balfa Toujours, Jo-El Sonnier, Beausoleil or Canray Fontenot [...] .flickr-photo { } .flickr-frame { float: left; text-align: center; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } [...] .flickr-photo { } .flickr-frame { float: left; text-align: center; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; } [...] Patois, pronounced pat-waa or sometimes pat-waa-z, is generally held to mean any language that is non-standard. The best bet seems to be that it originated from the Old French Patoier, meaning “to handle clumsily”. In English, a patois could be a regional dialect or a form of Pidgin English, such as the English spoken in [...] An interesting and contetious word. Representing the eighth letter of the English alphabet and pronounced ay-ch, there is much debate as to how it should be correctly pronounced. As it comes via Old French (roughly: aish), I can see no reason why anyone should pronounce it h-ay-ch. Many people still persist in pronouncing it with [...] A malapropism (mal-a-prop-izm) is a phrase in which one or more of the words is substituted with another, rendering the phrase or sentence completely nonsensical. The origin of the word is from Richard Sheridan’s Restoration comedy The Rivals, in which one of the characters, Mrs Malaprop, makes such mistakes on a regular basis. Her name [...] Ambergris is the most common spelling of this word – others include Ambergres and Ambergrease. Coming from Middle English, it literally means “grey amber”. Pronunciation is pretty much as you might expect – am-burr-griss. OK, origins and pronunciation aside, ambergris is a waxy substance found floating in the sea. It begins life soft and workable [...] |
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