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Category Archives: Language

Another lesson in linguistics

Monday, January 11, 2016

We live in a world in which the word “literally” now literally means the opposite of what it means, so it is not surprising that words are constantly misused. However, the ways in which they are misused can be instructive. The New York Times published a story this morning about the Western land issue that […]

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McGraw-Hill tripped up by little known historical fact

Monday, October 5, 2015

I haven’t been doing much blogging lately, for a number of reasons, not the least being my inability to come up with any more synonyms for “crazy”. Maybe Shakespeare would be up to the task of finding fresh things to say about the clowns running for president, or Republicans in Congress generally, but I confess […]

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All the euphemisms fit to print

Friday, July 24, 2015

The New York Times was never able, so far as I can recall, to refer to enhanced interrogation techniques by the more direct term torture. This was, of course, regrettable, because the word torture conveys the reality more directly and accurately than the euphemism. However, the Times’ avoidance of the T word was somewhat understandable, […]

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Hillary tips her hand

Saturday, June 6, 2015

Hillary Clinton and the other Democratic candidates are vying for the endorsement of the American Federation of Teachers. The fix is probably in, because the leader of the AFT is a Hillary supporter, but questions remain. Per usual, no one actually knows where Hillary stands on issues critical to teachers, such as the charter school […]

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Some lexical pushback

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Yesterday I bemoaned the tendency of the Left to allow the right to frame the terms of debate, including allowing them to abrogate warm and fuzzy words like “reform” and “pro-life” to describe themselves or their policies. Well, lo and behold, today in my in-box I got something from a group that isn't going to […]

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Lessons from Webster’s and Humpty Dumpty

Monday, January 12, 2015

Today I stumbled upon this article in the Progressive by Connecticut's own Jonathan Pelto, detailing the way in which the proponents of public school privatization are buying political influence. Now, Jonathan is not particularly popular with some of the elected politicians I know, but despite his sometimes abrasive way of writing, I like him because […]

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Step into that frame

Monday, December 22, 2014

Something there is about liberals, progressives, or whatever we want to call ourselves, that seems to compel us to allow others to frame the terms of our debate. This is a somewhat trivial example, but because it is so blatant, I have to point it out. This mostly excellent post at Naked Capitalism argues that […]

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Doublespeak, 2014 style

Thursday, July 24, 2014

“Everything is the opposite of what it is, isn't it”“ John Lennon quoting Harry Nillson Now comes the Office of Management and Budget to prove the truth of Harry's observation: U.S. statistical agencies have proposed major changes to the definitions of manufacturing and services that would fundamentally change our understanding of what manufacturing is and […]

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Evidence 101

Monday, March 17, 2014

As most politically aware people know, Paul Ryan recently blamed inner city poverty on “culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working”. It has been pointed out, entirely fairly, that this is a clear signal to the racists in his party that […]

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Some etymology

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Paul Krugman links to a blog called The Monkey Cage, by a political scientist named John Sides. Mr. Sides points out something that many of us have known for a while: that while people in this country call themselves conservatives, on the issues they tend to come out as liberals. Sides points out that most […]

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