YOU TALK FUNNY

Call it a vast linguistic conspiracy: proponents of the major conspiracy theo­ries of the day — the truthers, the birthers, the deathers — share a suffix that makes them all sound like whackdoodles. “It looks like conspiracy theorists might acquire a permanent suffix in -er, just like political scandals now have a permanent suffix in -gate,” Victor Steinbok, a frequent contributor to the American Dialect Society’s online discussion board, observed recently in that forum. But unlike -gate, which merely names a scandal, he later noted, -er “makes fun of the participant” as an obsessive, “almost foaming at the mouth” advocate of a fringe political belief.

I won’t make fun of you if you want to be a Rascaler.

RIP homeboy, RIP.

What’s done cannot be undone,” moaned Lady Macbeth in her famous sleepwalking scene. If she woke up in the 21st century, she would be pleased to discover that whatever can be done can be undone, too.

A word that means the opposite of another is an antonym; a word that looks as if it means one thing but means quite another could be called a phantonym, and warrants wariness.

Since I brought up the On Language header images, let’s post a few of the latest. Click through to the articles.

Funny:

Those who have pet peeves about language have chosen their domain of umbrage well, since it is inevitable that people will continue to make errors in speech and writing, and so there will always be something to be offended by, which can be very comforting.

From On Language:

The Cadillac division of General Motors has seen better days, with woeful sales figures even compared with those of other brands in the slumping luxury-car market. Yet the name Cadillac is thriving, at least on Capitol Hill. A centerpiece of legislation seeking to rein in health care costs is a tax on “Cadillac plans,” the favored shorthand for high-cost insurance policies. At the very high end are “gold-plated Cadillac plans,” or even “super-gold-plated Cadillac plans,” to use President Obama’s turn of phrase. How has the Cadillac brand survived as a stand-in for luxury, even as the cars themselves have lost much of their cachet?

This is not the original image they included. You know how I love their header pics but this time it was B-O-R-I-N-G.

New idea: I’m going to start refering to cars as “the Cadillac of cars.” It’s going to be great.

Shweet.

robot-heart:

Unfriend (via Hollis Brown Thornton)