A kindly English teacher gave me a copy of “Strine” when I was young – presumably to get me to sit down and/or shut up, as many of my teachers found it pleasing to do. I had completely forgotten about it, until the other day, when it just popped back into my head. In the true spirit of Word du Jour, I thought I’d waste no time in sharing it with you. The book was first published in the mid sixties in Sydney and sadly, I don’t recall ever having seen a copy of it since my youth. Now, thanks to the wonders of the interweb, I found a copy reproduced here.
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Thanks to Mme Joad, I don’t have to write a post today (well, apart from this introductory piece). She sent me a really amusing email – one of those that gets passed around one’s mailing list. As luck would have it, the subject was new words. The Washington Post has a section – on line at least, I’m not sure if it’s in the actual paper proper – called The Style Invitational. Its mission each week is to get people to play with words and submit entries into a competition, the prizes for which are laughably crass or ludicrously cheap and nasty – or both. The point is to have fun. One of their competitions was to take a dictionary word, change it by adding, subtracting or changing one letter and supply a new definition. I have left the American spellings as they are because, well, it’s American and I’m not that much of a curmudgeon when it comes to international spellings: Continue reading New (non) Words Exactly as the title suggests (although I appreciate the term “interesting” is subjective). First up is the website for Merriam-Webster, one of the most highly regarded US dictionaries. Yes, I know that I should be promoting British English but they have their language and I have mine. They probably think I talk funny, too. Every December they hold a poll to find the best word of the year. The imaginatively titled “Word of the Year” can be found by clicking here. Last year’s word was “truthiness” – a new word coined by the American comedian and satirist, Stephen Colbert on his show The Colbert Report. On the shortlist for linguistic fame this year are twenty words, including: Continue reading A Couple More Interesting Web Sites I am aware that there may be some of you out there who assume I get all my ideas from the The Big Boy’s Book of Wizard Words and I won’t spoil things by confirming or denying it. I do, however, like words and their usage – so anything that pops up on the World Wide Waste of Time to do with them naturally piques my interest. I thought that by way of a slight departure from the norm, I’d share a link or two with you that I have discovered recently. Continue reading Fun Word Stuff |
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