ON DICTIONARIES
ONE OF MY more obscure secondhand bookshop acquisitions was a French-Greek dictionary. It’s not completely useless, as I know a little French, albeit much less Greek. Perusing it got me … Continue reading
ON IMMANUEL KANT ET AL
I WAS PERUSING my secondhand copy of The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, this time around, getting around to reading its editor Clifton Fadiman’s introductory notes (for the first time, … Continue reading
SPRECHEN SIE/PARLEZ-VOUS/HABLA USTED ROTWELSCH?
I HADN’T HEARD of Rotwelsch until I read Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim’s “The Secret Code That Threatened Nazi Fantasies of Racial Purity,” her review in The New York Times, October 13, … Continue reading
A MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPT OF BATTLE PLANS
MANY MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS were liturgical, but there were exceptions. The fifteenth-century Visconti Semideus, as described in Christopher De Hamel’s Meeting with Remarkable Manuscripts, is an artful collection of battle plans. … Continue reading
QUOTE MARKS REDUX
THE QUOTATION MARK is the anonymous hero of written clarity. As described in Keith Houston’s entertaining Shady Characters, it is “quietly competent, thank you very much, and would like to … Continue reading
LRB TIDBITS
I’M ENJOYING MY most recent semi-monthly London Review of Books, July 30, 2020. Though having read only the first five of its tabloid-size pages, I’ve gleaned several tidbits worth sharing … Continue reading
JAMAICAN ENGLISH, FROM “A” TO…
ANY LANGUAGE IS living and evolving. Hence, I cannot expect my 1967 Dictionary of Jamaican English to be entirely au courant. Nonetheless, it makes for entertaining reading. The book’s dedication … Continue reading
ON BILINGUAL BRAINS
I ENJOYED READING Michael Hofmann’s “Not in Spanish,” in London Review of Books, May 21, 2020. This article is a review of The Bilingual Brain, by Albert Costa, Catalan cognitive … Continue reading
ETYMOLOGY: JINGOISTIC, JINGOISM
THE WORD “JINGOISTIC” came to mind, even before Trump’s trumped-up photo op at the West Point commencement on June 13, 2020. It might have been my memory of him standing … Continue reading
ETYMOLOGY: I AM APPALLED
BACK IN JANUARY 2018, I examined the word “embarrassed” in my series of Etymologies for our Times. Today, I add the word “appalled.” Indeed, as in “I am Embarrassed,” the … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 