It didn’t start with a pen, but a reed with a brush at the tip, and it didn’t start with ink, but a mixture of soot, water and vegetable gum. There definitely was a piece of papyrus. Around 2400 BC, Egyptian culture bestowed upon the world a great gift: the ability to write on paper. From the first Egyptian pictograph to the modern day sticky …
On October 13, 2010, President Obama signed into law the “United States Plain Writing Act of 2010.” Thirteen years after President Clinton issued his own “Plain Writing in Government” memorandum, the revised set of guidelines states that by July of this year all government agencies must simplify the often perplexing bureaucratic jargon used in documents produced for the American public. Gone are the grammatically longwinded sentences, …
A vociferous buzz that radiates throughout parts of the United States makes the news—once every 13 years. From the brilliant first light of day to the still and dark of night, a serenade is being sung. It is a mating call years in the making. Millions of cicadas come up from their underground bedrooms after completing a very long incubation period. The largest variety of 13-year …
Naming your newborn can be an exciting and creative experience. A person’s given name, or forename, is important because it is usually the first impression your child will make on the world. Some parents choose to honor a family member by naming their child after a father, mother, or sibling. Others look to history for that perfect given name. And some look to … Facebook? …
In James Boswell’s travelogue, Boswell In Holland 1763-64, the author writes: “The Scottish language is being lost every day, and in a short time will become quite unintelligible. To me, who have the true patriotic soul of an old Scotsman, that would seem a pity.” With those words, along with the encouragement of his good friend, Samuel Johnson, Boswell set out to collect a list …
Transgender issues are nothing new, but many of the words surrounding how we talk about gender identity are relatively young … at least by dictionary standards. In conversational use as early as the 1960s, transgender entered the dictionary in the early 1990s. Trans- is a Latin prefix meaning “across or beyond.” Gender shares the same Latin root as genus. Someone who is transgender does not …
Imagine this: your beloved great uncle bequeaths to you an old book, so old that it is literally coming apart at the seams. You tuck away the tattered tome in the attic, where it will stay for decades. One day you decide to unearth the inherited manuscript and have it appraised. To your astonishment, your great uncle left you a highly coveted artifact that dates back …
Typewriter enthusiasts around the globe felt a bit blue back in 2011 after hearing that Godrej and Boyce, one of the world’s last operational typewriter factories located in Mumbai, India, closed its doors for the last time after an impressive one-hundred-and-fourteen year run. Once regarded as an indispensable device for any writer, the typewriter has long been regarded for both its beauty and functionality. Ernest …
The origin of spoken language has stumped linguistics dating as far back as the Twenty-sixth dynasty in Egypt and the first recorded language experiment conducted by a Pharaoh named Psammetichus I. While it is widely understood that our ability to communicate through speech sets us apart from other animals, language experts, historians and scientists can only hypothesize how, where and when it all began. Some new …
A recent study led by Janet Werker, a psychologist at Vancouver’s University of British Columbia, suggests that children who learn two languages at once may have increased cognitive abilities such as enhanced visual and auditory sensitivity. While Werker does not believe that a person must grow up in a bilingual environment to gain such advantages, the study suggests that it can’t hurt. Werker studied both …
From its humble beginnings as a Roman numeral to its eventual tenth position in the English alphabet, J has had quite a linguistic journey. When was J added to the alphabet? J is a bit of a late bloomer; after all, it was the last letter added to the alphabet. It is no coincidence that I and J stand side by side—they actually started out as the same …
Metaphors and similes are figures of speech used to add flair and humor to a phrase. These popular rhetorical devices are all well and good, but sometimes you just need to get to the point; enter hypocatastasis. What is hypocatastasis? Linguistically, both a hypocatastasis and a metaphor imply “a resemblance, representation or comparison.” However, hypocatastasis packs more of a punch than a metaphor because it uses …
