OddThinking

The sign at the butchery advertised “Butterflyed Chicken”.

In which Julian grumbles pointlessly about a couple of word puzzles and a kid’s poem, and then is reminded of a better example of a word puzzle, discovers something interesting about a puzzle’s origin, and goes off a little happier.

Did you ever notice that some people (all people?) have certain phrases that they use a disproportionately high percentage of the time?

You may find in infuriating or endearing – probably depending on what you think of the person anyway.

I was wondering what my commonly-repeated phrases might be.

Then I realised I had a large corpus of my writing on this blog, and I may be able to do an experiment to find out.

I wanted to point out a new linguistic phenomenon out to the world.

I’ve noticed that my ability to get changes made depends on my mood. Conversely, my mood is determined by my ability to achieve change.

Can you come up with two different words (spelling irrelevant but different meanings) which are pronounced exactly the same except that the “th” sound is voiced in one and not in the other?

Deep down I fear that one day, I will be outed.

Despite my best efforts to bleat reassurances that I believe that the English language is fluid and changing, and there is no point pretending that there is one correct way to speak it, some linguist is one day going to point at me and yell “Hey! Wait a minute! He’s not a descriptivist! He’s a damn prescriptivist! Get him!”

I think we need to keep an eye on our reactions to swear words, and keep our responses in proportion to the damage that is being done by them.

A quick look at the world of upper- and lower-case

A new word for me.