Word of the Year 2007
185 Responses
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So how about some creative egg-horning or will that make you all apocalyptic?
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I am still enamoured with the term "bromantic".
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horse mounted hippies disciplining the flock
I know that was way back on the thread, but thanks Steven Crawford for giving me the most bizarre mental image of my entire week (and I love bizarre).
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Fell is cruel or fierce
Ta - you know, I realise I originally guessed it was related to foul at the time I was probably reading the LotR at age 13 or so (fell beasts etc). Been under the misapprehension ever since.
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I was probably reading the LotR at age 13
ah.. the halcyon daze.
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I seem to be surrounded by people who suffer from some weird pseudo-homonym dyslexia...
The linguistic community has a name for these - they're called eggcorns
I thought the word for this is was 'malapropism'. My wife does them all the time and they seriously crack me up. Some of them are really quite apt.
btw, I withdraw my entry 'Fizzer' in awe of 'Sub-prime' capturing it much better. Now I won't trust Fizzer with a tin-foot barge pool.
I agree with Robyn that 'World Class' really means 'World Class in Oceania'.
Well, you can't be literally buggered if you're supine.
Don't make me show you a picture. The only thing you can't be literally buggered in is a chastity belt.
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Oh wait - I have another - Bollard (def: Thick wooden post, an impediment to progress).
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The only thing you can't be literally buggered in is a chastity belt.
I really really hope that one day I'll be able to use that quote in a conversation.
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I waive all copyright, just for you. All I ask is that you relate how you pulled it off. I'll be metaphorically buggered if I can work out how you could.
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...chastity belts...All I ask is that you relate how you pulled it off.
She's good at picking locks. With her tongue.
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Sorry, that was probably inappropriate. But I've had six bottles of [redacted] sitting on my desk all day for [redacted] and I haven't touched them, and I've already blow-dried my hair, and now I am clock-watching until the big shindig tonight. And trying to fight rising needless sensations of panic.
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Your locks are itching to be picked? (one your [redacted])
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Nah, the penicillin took care of the itching, thanks for asking though!I'm just keen to start partying...
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"Scumbag"
after 20 years in Wellington i finally went and sat through question time
very interesting it actually makes perfect sense now. you say something to wind someone up so they show there true colours Cullen can look like a very angry school teacher sometimes -
No, Kath and Kim think "pacific" is an Australianism - maybe we gave it to them, or maybe it's just transnational Basic Bogan.
"Apostrophe Catastrophe" was the title of a mystery serial I wrote online with a Canadian co-author around 1999, just for a lark - someone gave it its own webpage and someone else wrote a fussy book with the same title some years afterwards.
Not wishing to be too negative, I'll also throw my vote behind "sub prime". It just seems to mean anything below par, dodgy or all-round stupid. Like lending to people with insufficient funds.
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Nah, the penicillin took care of the itching, thanks for asking though!I'm just keen to start partying...
Crikey. I was actually referring to the locks on your 6 bottles of [redacted]. But I'm glad to hear the [redacted] is all cleared up too.
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is [redacted] the new smurf?
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I thought the word for this is was 'malapropism'.
I do that, I hold the computer spell check responsible. I'm crap at spelling, it should know better.
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It never catches my 2 most common typos - "on" for "one" and "to" for "too". Grammar checking in MS Word used to do a sterling job for that, and also opened my eyes to the whole world of split infinitives. But it did piss me off that it always pulled me up for using the passive voice, or any sentence with more than 15 words. Would have been good if you could turn certain warnings off, as 'my style' settings.
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Grammar checking in MS Word used to do a sterling job for that...
I have nothing but obscenities for Grammar Checker. Allow me ( cause how're you gonna stop me) to share from Language Log on the subject:
For the most part, accepting the advice of a computer grammar checker on your prose will make it much worse, sometimes hilariously incoherent. If you want an amusing way to while away a rainy afternoon, take a piece of literary prose you consider sublimely masterful and run the Microsoft Word™ grammar checker on it, accepting all the suggested changes.
I designed a writing exercise for our group last year that was full of grammar errors. Too/to, stripped/striped (okay, yeah, it was erotica), and for a laugh, I ran it through MS's grammar and spelling checkers to see what it would pick up correctly. Answer? Nothing at all.
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But it did piss me off that it always pulled me up for using the passive voice, or any sentence with more than 15 words. Would have been good if you could turn certain warnings off, as 'my style' settings.
Umm, you can - Tools, Options, Spelling & Grammar, Grammar Settings.
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Umm, you can
You can now. But I haven't used Word for years. Glad to hear they followed my (and a million other people's) suggestions, though.
Emma, despite the truth of all that, that doesn't make them useless. They're good at the subset of proofreading that they do.
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Emma, despite the truth of all that, that doesn't make them useless. They're good at the subset of proofreading that they do.
Well, it's a combination of poor tool (in that they can't read context, which is the main thing that tells you whether you've used the right word or not), and PEBKAC. I've had people who call themselves writers tell me they don't need to proof-read, because they've used the spelling and grammar checkers. If those tools weren't there, they would proof-read, and end up with a slightly better end product.
But that throwing in some John Donne and accepting all the 'corrections' is a genuinely fun game, at least for literature nerds.
No, actually on consideration, I don't even accept the 'subset' thing, because they're wrong about as often as they're right. They're only useful if you have a functioning intelligence in the chair to begin with.
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They're only useful if you have a functioning intelligence in the chair to begin with.
True of so many things in life...
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Emma, I don't buy it. The kind of things it pinged me for were pretty useful, like punctuation and simple typos that just made no sense (but were not spelling mistakes). Sure it didn't catch the accidental typos that did make grammatical sense, but they are a much lesser number. It's a support system, not a substitute for proof reading, and I found it useful. It catches the kind of things people miss, like putting the
the twice across lines.OK, I do buy that it can make you lazy. That's pretty much the case with all software, and has never been a particularly compelling excuse not to use it. It's more of an argument to get harsh on the mistakes that people try to excuse themselves from in their lazy use of a system.
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