- Last 7 days
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artofmemory.com artofmemory.com
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Gregor von Feinaigle by [[Art of Memory]] wiki
Origin of finagle? Long-standing question for me, but only bookmarking now.
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- Nov 2024
- Sep 2024
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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are there parallels/antecedents to be drawn between the sirname Silliman and the early definitions of the word silly as "religious or holy"?
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- Apr 2024
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www.newyorker.com www.newyorker.com
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Muhanna, Elias. “A New History of Arabia, Written in Stone.” The New Yorker, May 23, 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-new-history-of-arabia-written-in-stone.
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Al-Jallad began pulling up every inscription that mentioned migrating in search of rain, and soon he had a long list of terms that had resisted translation. Comparing them with the Greek, Aramaic, and Babylonian zodiacs, he started making connections. Dhakar matched up nicely with dikra, the Aramaic word for Aries, and Amet was derived from an Arabic verb meaning “to measure or compute quantity”—a good bet for the scales of Libra. Hunting for Capricorn, the goat-fish constellation, Al-Jallad found the word ya’mur in Edward Lane’s “Arabic-English Lexicon,” whose translation read, “A certain beast of the sea, or . . . a kind of mountain-goat.” He stayed up all night, sifting the database and checking words against dictionaries of ancient Semitic languages. By morning, he had deciphered a complete, previously unknown Arabian zodiac. “We’d thought that they were place names, and, in a way, they were,” he told me. “They were places in the sky.”
There's got to be a great journal article on this!
Tags
- Robert Hoyland
- Greek
- Ali Al-Manaser
- Michael Macdonald
- stones
- inscriptions
- stone inscriptions
- Babylonian zodiac
- safaitic script
- Edward Lane
- Aramaic
- archaeology of orality
- historical linguistics
- Babylonian
- Aramaic zodiac
- Arabian zodiac
- References
- Greek zodiac
- surface survey archaeology
- semitic languages
- history of Islam
- place names
- Elias Muhanna
- read
- translation
- Fred Donner
- Ahmad Al-Jallad
Annotators
URL
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- Mar 2024
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Evenbefore his betrayal, though, he felt little identification with the colonists,writing that North Carolinians were the most “cowardly Blockheads[another word for lubber] that ever God created & must be used likenegro[e]s if you expect any good of them.”29
blockheads as a synonym for lubber
This gives new meaning to the use of "blockhead" in Charles Schultz' Peanuts (usually Lucy in reference to Charlie Brown).
Recall Samuel Johnson's (1709-1784) aphorism:
“No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”
Definition from Webster's Dictionary (1913):
Block"head` (?), n. [Block + head.] A stupid fellow; a dolt; a person deficient in understanding.
"The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head." —Pope.
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Local file Local file
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Office Organisation, of which the work here discussed forms part, 2has been considerably modified within recent years, and Avhatis called the " card system " has now come very much into vogue.
The nebulous, but colloquial "card system" was a common, but now lost moniker for the use of a card index in business settings in the early 1900s.
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hardhistoriesjhu.substack.com hardhistoriesjhu.substack.com
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Read [[Martha S. Jones]] in Sleuthing the Card Catalog
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The Library of Congress discontinued the use of “Negroes” as a subject heading in 1976.
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I fingered my way through where I thought I’d find entries: African American, Afro-American, Black. Nothing there. I had to then brainstorm like it was 1999, or was it 1989, 1979, or even earlier, to discover the right term. As far back as 1984, the Library of Congress, whose subject headings most research libraries in the United States utilize, admitted that it was “frustrating” to search for Black people in its catalog because two terms were simultaneously in use: “Afro-Americans” and “Blacks.”1 Neither term made it into the old Peabody Library catalog, so perhaps it and the terminology it reflected dated from an even earlier time.
Research on keywords and their shifting meanings over time can make things difficult for the novice researcher. This example from Martha S. Jones certainly highlights this perspective even in under a century of semantic shift.
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- Feb 2024
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My first spread doing this, I am so excited :D
quote from u/Panna1207 at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/18uqjwk/my_first_spread_doing_this_i_am_so_excited_d/
https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/search/?q=spread&restrict_sr=1
First time I've seen a photo of a commonplace book referred to a "spread" which is more commonly seen in Bullet Journal contexts.
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Local file Local file
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The random selection of words by volunteers often resulted in themchoosing the same words with similar dates, and produced gaps in thequotation paragraphs, which Murray and his assistants had to fill by their ownmanual searching. This must have been like trying to find a needle in ahaystack. It was remarkable how successful Murray’s small team was at fillingthose gaps and finding earliest or latest quotations. Murray told thePhilological Society that this manual trawling for words had to be done forthe majority of words: ‘For more than five-sixths of the words we have tosearch out and find additional quotations in order to complete their historyand illustrate the senses; for every word we have to make a general search todiscover whether any earlier or later quotations, or quotations in other senses,exist.’
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Readers were asked to choose words they considered ‘rare’ and the choice ofthese words was random – they were not guided by Murray on what wasneeded. This resulted in a dearth of quotations for common words whichultimately had to be found by Murray and his assistants. In the first part of theDictionary alone, ‘nearly the whole quotations for about, after, all, also, and,in Part I, and for any, as, in Part II, have had to be found by myself and myassistants’, he explained to the Philological Society. If he had his time again,he said that he would have directed his Readers differently, with theinstructions, ‘Take out quotations for all words that do not strike you as rare,peculiar, or peculiarly used.’
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Miss Clowes of Ipswich and Miss Wheaton of Bloomsbury Square‘threw up’ (gave up)
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https://pages.oup.com/ol/cus/1646173949115570121/submit-words-and-evidence-to-the-oed
The modern day digital version of an OED contribution slip includes database fields for the following:
- Submission type (new word or sense of a word; information about origin/etymology; other)
- the word or phrase itself
- the part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, other)
- pronunciation (recording, IPA, rhyming words, etc.)
- the definition or sense number as defined in the OED
- quotation evidence with full text, and bibliographical references/links)
- additional notes
Only the first two fields are mandatory.
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www.oed.com www.oed.com
- Jan 2024
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johnhalbrooks.substack.com johnhalbrooks.substack.comThe Ruin1
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I have left the word wyrd untranslated from the Old English. It means something like “fate” or “doom.” It is the ancestor of the modern English word weird. When Shakespeare refers to the witches in Macbeth as the “weird sisters,” he doesn’t mean that they are strange (though they are), but rather that they have to do with fate. Weird in its modern sense (meaning “strange” or “uncanny”) is probably connected to the mysterious or “weird” nature of fate.
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- Nov 2023
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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GRMacGirl · 3 days agoSame. I journal them in a Commonplace Book. If I feel the need to keep a note IN the book for some reason I write it on a separate piece of paper and tuck it between the pages. Exception: cooking/recipe books where I need to have the information right there any time I’m cooking the food.
Interesting use of the verb "journal" to indicate placing something into a commonplace book.
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- Oct 2023
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www.nytimes.com www.nytimes.com
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Biblical Hebrew has an unusually small vocabulary clustered around an even smaller number of three-letter roots, most of them denoting concrete actions or things, and the Bible achieves its mimetic effects partly through the skillful repetition of these few vivid words.
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lawliberty.org lawliberty.org
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Alter knows it ain’t Jesus.
The colloquial use of the word "ain't" here very specifically pegs James Bruce, the author, as writing his argument for an audience of Christians in the Southern part of the United States. It's even more stark as most of his review is of a broadly scholarly nature where the word "ain't" or others of its register would never be used.
How does the shift in translation really negate room for Jesus? If it was a truism that it stood for Jesus, then couldn't one just as simply re-translate the New Testament to make sure that the space for him is still there? Small shifts in meaning and translation shouldn't undermine the support for Jesus so easily as Bruce suggests, otherwise there are terrible problems with these underpinnings of Christianity.
If one follows Bruce's general logic, then there's a hell of a religion based on Nostradamus' work we're all going out of our way to ignore.
What would historical linguistics have to say about this translation?
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delong.typepad.com delong.typepad.com
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If it requires too many words, you have not seen theunity but a multiplicity.
How are they defining "multiplicity" here? There seems to be a tacit definition with respect to being in opposition to "unity" (of a work), but not an explicit one. It also seems to be a shaded meaning with respect to the more common one.
unity: essence, core, coherence, oneness
They use the word "multiplicity" in the usual sense of large number or multitude on p55: "The multiplicity of the rules indicates the complexity of the one habit to be formed, not a plurality of distinct habits."
They also revisit it in the upcoming section: "Mastering the Multiplicity: The Art of Outlining a Book" on p88
Perhaps its just me but there's a linguistic "softness" of the uses of unity and multiplicity here with respect to 2023. Though these two opposites fit the dictionary definitions of their words, is it possible that this softness is the result of a sort of historical linguistic shift I'm feeling in these words? I can't quite put my finger on it, but perhaps it's the relationship of unity to religion? Neither seem to be frequently used these days.
The Ngram Viewer shows peaks for the use of unity in 1660 and 1960 of almost 75% higher usage compared to a broader historical average. It is generally waning since. Multiplicity has about 1/4 the use of unity and has remained flat over time. What caused the peaks in the use of "unity" during these periods? This 1972 use was on the downslope of the 1960s peak. Was it used in the 1940 version?
The 20th century increase in the use of unity begins around 1914 and may have been related to political shades of meaning going into WWI with another marked rise in the lead up to WW2.
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- Aug 2023
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www.google.com www.google.com
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"in his youth he was full of vim and vigor"
vim<br /> 2023 definition: energy; enthusiasm
vim is rarely ever seen outside of the context of the phrase "vim and vigor" and seems to be a calcified word within this phrase.
vigor<br /> 2023 definition: physical strength and good health
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"in his youth he was full of vim and vigor"
Do calcified words eventually cease to have any definition over time? That is they have a stand alone definition, then a definition within their calcified phrase, then they cease to have any stand alone definition at all though they continue existence only in those calcified phrases.
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- Jun 2023
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twitter.com twitter.com
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The German word 'Arbeit', work, descends from Porto-Germanic *arbaidiz, which meant hardship or suffering. Going a couple of thousand years further back in time, the ancestor of arbaidiz was Porto-Indo-European *h₃órbʰos, which mean orphan or slave. 'Orphan' has the same root via Latin. So Arbeit <> orphan: distant cousins. 'Arbeit' did have a relative in Old English too: it was 'earfoþe', difficult, hard
via Cameron (@Black_Kettle) at https://twitter.com/Black_Kettle/status/1669382585087033347
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www.lrb.co.uk www.lrb.co.uk
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Commentators insisted that gossip was the province of women. Originally meaning ‘godparent’, ‘gossip’ shifted its meaning across the early modern period. It became commonplace to accuse women of gossiping and of being gossips, and a set of meanings crystallised around the word that reflected men’s anxiety about what women were saying about them behind their backs.
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- Apr 2023
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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I decided to translate the German “Zettelkasten” as “Zettelkasten” since I consider this an established term.
An example of a bi-lingual German-English speaker/writer specifically translating and using Zettelkasten as an established word in English.
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- Mar 2023
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www.jstor.org www.jstor.org
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Hayes, William C. Review of Historical Records of Rameses III, by William F. Edgerton and John A. Wilson. American Journal of Archaeology 40, no. 4 (1936): 558–59. https://doi.org/10.2307/498809.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/498809
...have been diligently consulted and compared with the present versions and the authors have also availed themselves of the invaluable material contained in the Zettelkasten of the Berlin Wirterbuch der...
This is the oldest appearance of the word "Zettelkasten" appearing in a journal article which I could find on JSTOR.
I'm not surprised it's in a journal in the humanities and specifically on archaeology.
Update: even better, this has introduced me to a massive new ZK: Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache!
Where is Indiana Jones' zettelkasten?!
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Local file Local file
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Hayes, William C. Review of Historical Records of Rameses III, by William F. Edgerton and John A. Wilson. American Journal of Archaeology 40, no. 4 (1936): 558–59. https://doi.org/10.2307/498809.
Tagged this because it's the first appearance of Zettelkasten in an English language setting in the JSTOR repository.
see also: https://hypothes.is/a/RYZOssqXEe2H5wtABI0puA
Started on 2023-03-24; finished on 2023-03-27.
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Allavailable earlier copies and parallel texts havebeen diligently consulted and compared with thepresent versions and the authors have also availedthemselves of the invaluable material contained inthe Zettelkasten of the Berlin Wirterbuch der
ägyptischen Sprache.
This is the first use of the word Zettelkasten in an English (non-German) context in JSTOR that I've been able to find.
Still likely not the first appearance, but reasonably early...
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Local file Local file
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Blair, Ann M. “The Rise of Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe.” Intellectual History Review 20, no. 3 (August 4, 2010): 303–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2010.492611.
Annotation target: urn:x-pdf:202007e9836543a7b69e7045c81f5965
Hypothes.is: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=url%3Aurn%3Ax-pdf%3A202007e9836543a7b69e7045c81f5965
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www.jstor.org www.jstor.org
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Review: [Untitled] Roman und Satire im 18. Jahrhundert: Ein Beitrag zur Poetik by Jörg Schönert Review by: J. D. Workman Monatshefte, Vol. 62, No. 4 (Winter, 1970), pp. 420-421 https://www.jstor.org/stable/30156502
...form of the period for which there are no classical "rules." Schinert musters his evidence in an interesting and generally very lucid manner, although at times he may seem somewhat overzealous, if not indeed repetitious, in assembling all the data: at times one detects the faint odor of the Zettelkasten...
faint odor! ha! and in an English language document.
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www.jstor.org www.jstor.org
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In Memoriam: Josef Körner (9 May 1950) Robert L. Kahn The Modern Language Review, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Jan., 1963), pp. 38-59 https://www.jstor.org/stable/3720394
...of German letters long before Heine, impudently naive and imprudently honest, though always in- dustrious, 'griindlich' (and was it not Korner who 'discovered' the numerous un- published notebooks of Friedrich Schlegel and, in turn, left behind some twenty ' Zettelkasten ' which were recently acquired by Bonn University, a unique 'Fund-...
example of use of zettelkasten in English here in 1963 specifically as a loan word from German...
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www.jstor.org www.jstor.org
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Review: [Untitled] Historical Records of Rameses III by William F. Edgerton, John A. Wilson Review by: William C. Hayes American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1936), pp. 558-559
...have been diligently consulted and compared with the present versions and the authors have also availed themselves of the invaluable material contained in the Zettelkasten of the Berlin Wirterbuch der...
This is the oldest appearance of the word "Zettelkasten" appearing in a journal article which I could find on JSTOR.
I'm not surprised it's in a journal in the humanities and specifically on archaeology.
Where is Indiana Jones' zettelkasten?!
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Local file Local file
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Isuwans
Isuwa (transcribed Išuwa and sometimes rendered Ishuwa) was the ancient Hittite name for one of its neighboring Anatolian kingdoms to the east. Isuwa is the origin of our word 'Asia'.
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www.gutenberg.org www.gutenberg.org
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A Graduated English-Welsh Spelling Book by John Lewis
Some of the words may have shifted a bit since 1857, but there's something delightfully subversive about considering using this book to learn/practice Welsh in 2023.
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www.google.com www.google.com
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Seen in a Hoskins business equipment advertisement in Business magazine (1903) for card index:
YOUR BUSINESS AT YOUR FINGER ENDS
Close to the phrase "at your finger tips". Would it have appeared before or after this?
Business: The Magazine for Office, Store and Factory. Vol. 16. Business Man’s Publishing Company, 1903. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Business/QKaxezfHjL0C?hl=en&gbpv=0.
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- Feb 2023
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www.washingtonpost.com www.washingtonpost.com
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Internet ‘algospeak’ is changing our language in real time, from ‘nip nops’ to ‘le dollar bean’ by [[Taylor Lorenz]]
shifts in language and meaning of words and symbols as the result of algorithmic content moderation
instead of slow semantic shifts, content moderation is actively pushing shifts of words and their meanings
article suggested by this week's Dan Allosso Book club on Pirate Enlightenment
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Tags
- wordnik
- colloquialisms
- marginalized groups
- content moderation
- portmanteau
- cancel culture
- demonitization
- definitions
- algorithms
- human computer interaction
- historical linguistics
- hw-algospeak
- cultural taboos
- leetspeak
- social media
- dialect creation
- Voldemorting
- dialects
- euphemisms
- cultural anthropology
Annotators
URL
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www.srf.ch www.srf.ch
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Lois Hechenblaikner, Andrea Kühbacher, Rolf Zollinger (Hrsg.): «Keine Ostergrüsse mehr! Die geheime Gästekartei des Grandhotel Waldhaus in Vulpera». Edition Patrick Frey, 2021.Der reich bebilderte Band bietet eine spannende Reise in ein Stück Schweizer Tourismusgeschichte: Die Herausgeber haben die 20'000 Karteikarten aus den Jahren 1920-1960 sehr sorgfältig kuratiert, nach Themen gegliedert und in einen grösseren, gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhang gestellt.Die Leserinnen und Leser erfahren viel über die Klientel im Hotel Waldhaus, zum Teil sogar in kleinen biografischen Porträts; und sie können an konkreten Beispielen verfolgen, wie sich der Sprachgebrauch der Concierges im Laufe der Zeit verändert – gerade zum Beispiel im Zusammenhang mit jüdischen Gästen.
Google Translate:
Lois Hechenblaikner, Andrea Kühbacher, Rolf Zollinger (editors): «No more Easter greetings! The secret guest file of the Grandhotel Waldhaus in Vulpera". Edition Patrick Frey, 2021.
The richly illustrated volume offers an exciting journey into a piece of Swiss tourism history: the editors have very carefully curated the 20,000 index cards from the years 1920-1960, structured them by topic and placed them in a larger, social context.
The readers learn a lot about the clientele in the Hotel Waldhaus, sometimes even in small biographical portraits; and they can use concrete examples to follow how the concierge's use of language has changed over time - especially in connection with Jewish guests, for example.
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- Jan 2023
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www.complexityexplorer.org www.complexityexplorer.org
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Semantic leadership Extent to which word usage by one entity is subsequently adopted by others. Specifically, Klein measures how often novel semantic usage in a given newspaper is mirrored by other newspapers. When a newspaper is a semantic leader, its semantic usage better predicts the later usage of that word in other newspapers compared to those other newspapers' own, earlier usage of the word.
How might this leadership happen within the social epidemic view of Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point framework?
- the law of the few,
- the stickiness factor, and
- the power of context
and with respect to mavens, connectors, and salespeople?
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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- Llyn Bochlwyd (lake gray cheek)
- Foel Fawr
- Coed Llugwy
- Cwm Cneifion
Erasure of culture
Memory and place names
"A nation which forgets its past has no future." - Winston Churchill (check quote and provenance)
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www.complexityexplorer.org www.complexityexplorer.org
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a common technique in natural language processing is to operationalize certain semantic concepts (e.g., "synonym") in terms of syntactic structure (two words that tend to occur nearby in a sentence are more likely to be synonyms, etc). This is what word2vec does.
Can I use some of these sorts of methods with respect to corpus linguistics over time to better identified calcified words or archaic phrases that stick with the language, but are heavily limited to narrower(ing) contexts?
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richardcarter.com richardcarter.com
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For the time being, my writing app of choice is Ulysses, but plenty of others are available—even, heaven help you, Micros✽ft W✽rd.
Multiple interesting things going on here with the use of "Micros✽ft W✽rd".
He's simultaneously: - Voldemorting the phrase to some extent so that it doesn't show up easily or at all in digital search. - He's visually marring the phrase to show active dislike of the software and its general use - By using the symbols, he's effectively turning the word into a form of profanity the way many have used the top row of symbols on typewriters to indicate swear words in the 20th century. Examples: sh@t, dmn, he!!, or any set of four symbols like &%^ to generally indicate a "four letter word" as many profane words typically have four letters.
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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If it interests you, GPC lists phrases like dysgu ar gof. This page then gives the example, "Yn yr hen ddyddiau byddai pobl yn dysgu cerddi ar gof" - like saying "to learn by heart" in English.
https://www.reddit.com/r/learnwelsh/comments/10acr9j/sut_i_ddweud_i_memorized_yn_gymraeg/
Fascinating that the Welsh language doesn't seem to have a direct translatable word/verb for "to memorize". The closest are dysgu (to learn, to teach) and cofio (to remember).
Related phrase: yn dysgu cerddi ar gof (to learn poems by heart), though this last is likely a more direct translation of an English concept back into Welsh.
Is this lack of a seemingly basic word for such a practice a hidden indicator of the anthropology of their way of knowing?
If to learn something means that one fully memorizes it from the start, then one needn't sub-specify, right?
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www.cambridge.org www.cambridge.org
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An additional affordance of <Y> is that it may be the first known example of an ‘action‘ word, i.e. a verb (‘to give birth’), although we acknowledge that this is ambiguous: it could function as a noun, ‘birth’, or ‘place of birth’.
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- Nov 2022
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www.pbs.org www.pbs.org
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The final thing I will say is, we have the 2016 model in our mind that, if there's a normie Republican, they get crushed by Donald Trump. Why should a Mike DeWine, not that he's going to run, but why — normie Republicans did way better than the performative Republicans.
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8Km_Vyhvww
David Brooks here (coins?) uses the phrase "normie Republican" to describe Republicans who tend to center rather than to the far right, Christian right, or who are Trump Republicans. Some of those people might describe these normie Republicans as Rhinos (Republicans in name only.)
Typically I've only seen "normie" used by those who identify as ADHD, Aspergers, or otherwise on the (neurodiverse) spectrum to describe average people who don't display those behaviors.
Judy Woodruff: So, I just want to be clear. We're using the word normie, as in — this is a David Brooks word, right? (LAUGHTER)
David Brooks: No, this — I did not invent this. I think two generations below me invented that word. (LAUGHTER)
Brooks admits he learned the word from others, but he's also using it with a different meaning and context than the original "normie" unadorned.
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view.connect.americanpublicmedia.org view.connect.americanpublicmedia.org
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The word “kafala” in Arabic has traditionally been used to describe a social and moral “responsibility to another.” Researchers Ray Jureidini and Said Fares Hassan write, “kafala contracts were used to protect the weak and vulnerable by instituting the patronage of a prominent local who provided whatever protection was required.” Think of raising an orphaned child, for example. In business, kafala originally referred to contracts where a guarantor assumes liability for another person (e.g. a cosigner for a loan). Kafala nowadays is often used to describe the legal relationship between businesses and migrant workers. Employers, typically citizens, act as sponsors for workers and assume legal responsibility for their movement and actions in exchange for their right to work in a geographic area.
The use of kafala shows a shift from a meaning of social responsibility into a meaning co-opted by capitalism and social contract.
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getblogging.org getblogging.org
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Originally blogs were called weblogs: a log of activity that you wrote to the web. Peter Merholz jokingly split the term into two words to make it an activity: we blog. Ev Williams started to use it as a verb and a noun: to blog. And the rest is history.
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forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
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https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/848/zettelizers
A thread about what to call those who have a zettelkasten or those who practice the method.
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- Oct 2022
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agate.academy agate.academy
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All materials available will be evaluated: Dictionaries, glossaries, and texts of a literary and non-literary nature. The slip box presently contains 1.5 million slips referring to 12 million references; the slips are supplemented by means of digital material.
Dictionnaire étymologique de l’ancien français (DEAF) is a dictionary built out of a slip box containing 1.5 million slipswith over 12 million references.
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- Sep 2022
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theconversation.com theconversation.com
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“Doric” is a term used across Europe during the Renaissance to refer to rougher, but more genuine forms of language, in comparison to the “Attic” of the cities, smart but corrupt.
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twitter.com twitter.com
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https://twitter.com/inkasrain/status/1566410516721016833
Does anyone know what exactly this is? A friend gave it to me years ago when they visited Jerusalem. I don't read Hebrew. Is it something harmless or should it be shamshed(jew magic)? (attached photo of a mezuzah)
The idea of "magic" here within a modern religious context is interesting in that it shows the divergence of religion and magic as concepts with respect to cultural practices.
The phrasing also has a sense of othering the unknown culture with a sense of fear in the idea that the object should be smashed. There's also a lack of basic science knowledge and tinge of superstition implied by the fact that they think that smashing will somehow dissipate the unknown magic.
So many different cultural indicators of various things going on here...
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- Aug 2022
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threadreaderapp.com threadreaderapp.com
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https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1560611614226882560.html
A reframing of what the story of the Tower of Babel means.
The moral of the Tower of Babel is to encourage power with rather than power over.
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danallosso.substack.com danallosso.substack.com
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We might learn something new, if we understood both sides.
Allosso is using "both sides" in a broadly journalistic fashion the way it had traditionally meant in the mid to late 21st century until Donald J. Trump's overtly racist comment on Aug. 15, 2017 "you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides." following the Charlottesville, VA protests.
Perhaps it might be useful if people quit using the "both sides" as if there were only two perspectives on an issue (for or against), when in reality there is often a spectrum of thoughts and feelings, not all mutually exclusive, about issues?
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The use o f t h ediphthong is becoming rare.
Interesting that he notices this and explicitly calls it out in a handbook on writing.
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Mechanical form.Use standard size (8t/,xll in.) type-writer pa er or the essay paper in standard use a t the in-stitution. %or typing, use an unruled bond paper of goodquality, such as “Paragon Linen” or “Old Hampshire Mills.”At the left of the page leave a margin of 1% to l’/e inches;and a t the top, bottom, and right of the page, a margin of1 inch. Write only on one side of the paper. In ty in thelines should be double-spaced. Each chapter shouyd feginon a new page. Theses for honors and degrees must be typed;other essays may be typed or legibly written in ink. Whetherthe essay is typed or written, the use of black ink is prefer-able. The original typewritten copy must be presented. Incase two copies of a thesis are required, the second copymust be the first carbon and must be on the same quality ofpaper as the original.
Definitely a paragraph aimed at the student in the manner of a syllabus, but also an interesting tidbit on the potential evolution of writing forms over time.
How does language over time change with respect to the types and styles of writing forms, particularly when they're prescribed or generally standardized over time? How do these same standards evolve over time and change things at the level of the larger pictures?
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The use ofhyphens in compound words is becoming less frequent exceptwhen essential for clarity of meaning. The customary prac-tice is to write such words as coordinate with the dieresisrather than the hyphen.
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the writings of the Spanish physician JuanHuarte, who in the late sixteenth century published a widely translated studyon the nature of human intelligence. In the course of his investigations, Huartecame to wonder at the fact that the word for “intelligence,” ingenio, seems tohave the same Latin root as various words meaning “engender” or “generate.”
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forum.saysomethingin.com forum.saysomethingin.com
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https://forum.saysomethingin.com/t/grasshoppers/36340
Variations of the word grasshopper in Welsh:<br /> * Ceiliog y gwair * Sioncyn y gwair * Robin sbonciwr * Sbonciwr y gwair * Ceiliog y rhedyn
Note that the last one translates as cockerel of the fern and is probably related to kilhog-raden (in Bretton) and kulyek reden (in Cornish).
The verb (y)sboncio means to spring/leap/jump<br /> thus sbonciwr is someone/something that springs, leaps or jumps and is also related to sboncen (the game squash).
gwair translates as grass
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- Jul 2022
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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“Comparing notes” is a metaphor for talking throughideas for good reason
What is the origin of this metaphor?
One might suspect the 1500s or during the Scientific Revolution?
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www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
- Jun 2022
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www.merriam-webster.com www.merriam-webster.com
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www.danah.org www.danah.org
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So, i started researching where the capitalization of said pronoun came from and was quite stunned to find that it was always capitalized because it always appeared as the first word in a sentence, never stuck in the middle. And then, when it started appearing in the middle, it started getting capitalized out of convention and because people worried that it would get lost in script. Of course, "It's odd, and a little unsettling, to reflect upon the fact that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized; in many other languages "You" is capitalized and the "i" is lower case" (journalist Sydney J. Harris).
If it's true that English is the only major language in which "I" is capitalized instead of the more commonly capitalized "you", does this help to underline some of the self-centeredness show by most of the English speaking West?
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before you can think out of the box, you have tostart with a box
Can it be?! Twyla Tharp has an entire chapter in her book on creativity that covers a variation of the zettelkasten note taking concept!!!
Does the phrase "thinking outside of the box" make a tacit nod to the idea of using a card index (or the German zettelkasten) for note taking, sense making, and thinking?
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preview.redd.it preview.redd.it
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- May 2022
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www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au
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https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/the-influence/2022/05/28/jimi-bani
Myths and Legends of Torres Strait #WantToRead
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interactions.acm.org interactions.acm.org
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Blackwood Magazine most likely introduced the term in 1819, but Edgar Allan Poe popularized it some 25 years later with some of his published material: Marginalia. Since then, authors have had varying degrees of success creating their own collections of published marginalia. Among them is Walter Benjamin, who struggled after 13 years of research, leaving behind The Arcades Project: "the theater," he called it, "of all my struggles and all my ideas"
Blackwood Magazine most likely introduced the term marginalia in 1819. Edgar Allen Poe popularized the term with some of his published material entitled Marginalia.
What other (popular) published examples of marginalia exist?
Source for the Blackwood Magazine assertion?
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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www.merriam-webster.com www.merriam-webster.com
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zany noun plural zanies Definition of zany (Entry 2 of 2) 1 : a subordinate clown or acrobat in old comedies who mimics ludicrously the tricks of the principal : merry-andrew 2 archaic : a person who fawns over another person : a servile follower : toady … must have known the falsehood of the slander which they encouraged their zanies to propagate.— William Gifford 3a : one who acts the buffoon to amuse others b : nut, kook
I love this older definition of a zany.
h/t:
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Vintage alphabet with images of food, flora, fauna, household items, various sundry items, and a murder clown. pic.twitter.com/MqWYKcmjzt
— Michelle Krell Kydd (@glasspetalsmoke) May 25, 2021
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www.merriam-webster.com www.merriam-webster.com
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: low land that is covered wholly or partly with water unless artificially drained and that usually has peaty alkaline soil and characteristic flora (as of sedges and reeds)
fen
often heard in the phrase forests and fens
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- Mar 2022
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forum.saysomethingin.com forum.saysomethingin.com
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glas is a very old word, and while the more modern gwyrdd is used for green, glas can in fact be both blue and green, depending on context. The idea behind glas is not so much a colour itself, but the attribute you’d give to plants that are alive. The opposite is llwyd, which is connected to “dead” things like rocks, so naturally you’d translate it as gray, but sometimes it’s used as brown, too. (Again, the Welsh word brown is much newer than llwyd.)
The older Welsh words 'glas' and 'llwyd' designate both colors (green/blue and gray/brown respectively) but also indicate the idea of 'being alive' (like plants) or 'dead' (like rocks).
These words can sometimes be translated differently than the more modern words gwyrdd (green), glas (blue), llwyd (grey), brown (brown).
Irish is somewhat similar, where 'glas' is green, but usually for the less vivid greens of the natural world (seaweed might be called 'glas') versus artificial vivid green (the green on the Irish flag would be 'uaine'). However a 'madra glas' is not a green or blue dog, but a grey one.
Glasgow / Glaschu (the place name) means "green hollow".
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www.thenation.com www.thenation.com
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But it’s also the calculation a woman makes before responding to the e-mail of the failson who was just promoted ahead of her, or the calculation I make when a white executive comments on my Twitter feed but not my published columns.
Noting the rise in the use of the word failson.
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Topic A topic was once a spot not a subjecttopic. to ̆p’ı ̆k. n. 1. The subject of a speech, essay, thesis, or discourse. 2. A subject of discussion or con-versation. 3. A subdivision of a theme, thesis, or outline.*With no teleprompter, index cards, or even sheets of paper at their disposal, ancient Greek and Roman orators often had to rely on their memories for holding a great deal of information. Given the limi-tations of memory, the points they chose to make had to be clustered in some meaningful way. A popular and quite reliable method for remembering information was known as loci (see Chapter 9), where loci was Latin for “place.” It involved picking a house you knew well, imagining it in your mind’s eye, and then associating the facts you wanted to recall with specifi c places inside of that house. Using this method, a skillful orator could mentally fi ll up numerous houses with the ideas he needed to recall and then simply “visit” them whenever he spoke about a particular subject. The clusters of informa-tion that speakers used routinely came to be known as commonplaces, loci communes in Latin and koinos topos in Greek. The great Greek philosopher Aristotle referred to them simply as topos, meaning “places.” And that’s how we came to use topic to refer to subject or grouping of information.**
Even in the western tradition, the earliest methods of mnemonics tied ideas to locations, from whence we get the ideas of loci communes (in Latin) and thence commonplaces and commonplace books. The idea of loci communes was koinos topos in Greek from whence we have derived the word 'topic'.
Was this a carryover from other local oral traditions or a new innovation? Given the prevalence of very similar Indigenous methods around the world, it was assuredly not an innovation. Perhaps it was a rediscovery after the loss of some of these traditions locally in societies that were less reliant on orality and moving towards more reliance on literacy for their memories.
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www.cs.umd.edu www.cs.umd.edu
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I might call such a tool memex 2.0, to suggest an upgrade of Bush's memex, but I prefer genex, to indicate an orientation towa rds generating excellence. (Footnote: The closeness of genex to genetics and to generation-X is coincidental.)
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- Jan 2022
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Local file Local file
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Survivals of this spatially oriented technique still mark our language when we say “in the first place” and “passing on to the next point.”
The use of mnemonic techniques through history have been crystalized into our language with phrases like "in the first place" and "passing on to the next point".
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podcasts.ox.ac.uk podcasts.ox.ac.uk
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https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/medieval-welsh
<iframe width="640" height="400" src="https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/embed/eeb31eb0c12a7d56bc86" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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- Dec 2021
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indieweb.org indieweb.org
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There was a Web 2.0 and people spoke of Web 3.0. Now it all seems to be moving to the moniker web3. Perhaps because of the ability to search for the name or to turn it into a hashtag? #Web3.0 just doesn't work on Twitter which wants to treat the decimal as a period.
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- Nov 2021
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asiasociety.org asiasociety.org
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Huang, who has a background in paleography, warns that many characters do not function as a “signific,” a linguistic term indicating a relationship to the word’s meaning. Additionally, the meanings of numerous characters changed over time, or they were “loaned” to other words with separate meanings. Even though more than 86 percent of characters have radicals that also function as significs, Huang encourages teachers to understand some of the exceptions, saying, “It is all right for Chinese teachers not to lecture on these, but they have to know them because students may ask.”
More than 86% of characters in Chinese function as significs, a linguistic term indicating an association to the word's meaning. Sometimes these meanings can change with time and drift from original meanings.
The drift can be interesting and important from the perspective of historical linguistics as well as to give clues to changes in culture.
An example in English might be the use in computer user interfaces that include telephone handset images or old 3.5" floppy disk images used to respectively indicate "call" or "save" despite the fact that these items have either changed shape or are no longer commonly used.
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en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_alphabet
I was sort of hoping that there would be a more linguistic structured correspondence between the alphabet and numbers as a potential precursor of the phonetic major system, but alas no.
<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Chris Aldrich</span> in Chris Aldrich on Twitter: "@HeghnarW Great job on at the "Loss" conference! I'm curious about the alphabetic correspondence to numbers you mentioned in the canon tables of the Zeytun Gospels. Is it a 1 to 1 alphabetic correspondence as in Hebrew or 1-A, 2-B, 3-C, etc. or more complex? #sberg" / Twitter (<time class='dt-published'>11/19/2021 10:42:31</time>)</cite></small>
<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Heghnar Watenpaugh</span> in Heghnar Watenpaugh on Twitter: "@ChrisAldrich Chris, thanks so much for your interest! a table of the numerical values of the Armenian alphabet is here: https://t.co/cB1qFgNI3i" / Twitter (<time class='dt-published'>11/19/2021 10:42:31</time>)</cite></small>
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docdrop.org docdrop.org
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As when a man buries a burning log in a black ash heapon the island of the Phaiakiansin a remote place in the country, where none live near as neighbors, 490and saves the seed of fire, having no other place to get a light from, soOdysseus buried himself in the leaves, and Athene shed a sleep on his eyesso as most quickly to quit him,by veiling his eyes, from the exhaustion of his hard labors.
Wonderful analogy, particularly given the value of storing the heat and spark of fire in the wilderness at the time of the poem's composition.
This is an interesting use of the verb "to quit". I'm curious what the sense of the original Greek was. Who/what is quitting who/what?
Also interesting given his weakened state that he would need the help of Athene to fall asleep.
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www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
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Which is precisely what got some of these people into trouble, because the definition of acceptable has radically changed in the past few years.
acceptable
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www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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In one particularly ingenious entry, she explains the demise of the full stop (or, in American English, the “period”). If you have ever wondered why putting such once-crucial punctation in emails, phone messages or tweets now feels so awkward, here is the answer: “The period can feel so emphatic as to sound sarcastic, the internet’s version of ‘puh-leeze’ and ‘no, thank you’ and ‘srsly’ rolled into one tiny dot.” It can easily come across as passive-aggressive. Exclamation marks, moreover, “now convey warmth and sincerity”; failing to use them runs the risk of making the person you are messaging feel uncertain and anxious.
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www.newyorker.com www.newyorker.com
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Homer’s Greek is an amalgam of dialects from various regions and eras. It includes words and grammatical forms that were already puzzling Athenians in the fifth century B.C., when students had to read Homer in school.
The Greek in Homer is an amalgamation of dialects which is an indicator that the works were aggregated from many sources and turned into a final finished work.
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Ultimately, the only evidence that such a person as Homer ever lived is the existence of the Iliad and the Odyssey themselves.
This makes me wonder what the linguistic origin of the name Homer is? Was it common/uncommon? Does it's root indicate anything about who Homer may have been?
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- Oct 2021
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slate.com slate.com
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Who’s Afraid of Digital Natives? Let’s not get intimidated by kids and their Internet savvy.
This is a common trope/stereotype which since has generally turned out not to be true. While some of the generation at this time were more digitally savvy, on the whole it turns out that they aren't always as savvy as we thought or expected them to be.
Note that this was written in 2011.
When did the phrase "digital native" originate?
Cross reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_nativen which indicates:
Native–immigrant analogy terms, referring to age groups' relationships with and understanding of the Internet, were used as early as 1995 by John Perry Barlow in an interview,[9] and used again in 1996 as part of the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.
The specific terms "digital native" and "digital immigrant" were popularized by education consultant Marc Prensky in his 2001 article entitled Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, in which he relates the contemporary decline in American education to educators' failure to understand the needs of modern students.
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- Sep 2021
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www.huffpost.com www.huffpost.com
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www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
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The weird way you tap or push a whole image of a page to the side—it’s the uncanny valley of page turning, not a simulation or replacement of it.
This may be the first time I've seen uncanny valley applied to a topic other than recognizing people versus robots or related simulacra.
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sakai.duke.edu sakai.duke.edu
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-lit hours.60 There are few trades which are not described as honouring Saint Monday: shoemakers, tailors, colliers, printing workers, potters, weavers, hosiery workers, cutlers, all Cockneys. Despite the full employment of many London trades during the Napoleonic Wars, a witness complained that "we see Saint Monday so religiously kept in this great city.. . in general followed by a Saint Tuesday a
Saint Monday https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Monday
I've frequently heard people say they hate Mondays, but I've never heard of the cultural phenomenon of Saint Monday.
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nabled Tristram to date his conception very exactly. It also provoked The Clockmaker's Outcry against the Author: The directions I had for making several clocks for the country are counter- manded; because no modest lady now dares to mention a word about winding- up a clock, without exposing herself to the sly leers and jokes of the family ... Nay, the common expression of street-walkers is, "Sir, will you have your clock wound up
It also provoked The Clockmaker's Outcry against the author:
[...] Nay, the common expression of street-walkers is, "Sir, will you have your clock wound up?"
I've actually heard the euphemism clock in a sexual setting in my youth, but never heard the origin. This is the likely source. It's been 20 years or more since I've heard this in common speech though.
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knowablemagazine.org knowablemagazine.org
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- Aug 2021
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Local file Local file
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The classical meaning of this word was strongly linked to economic contexts. It was often used to denote ‘that whichis weighed together, kept together, saved’. C.T. Lewis and C. Short, A Latin Dictionary(Oxford: Oxford University Press,1999). For Enlightenment English speakers, the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED’s) 2a definition for compendium,which takes its early modern usage in neo-Latinate culture into account, is: ‘An abridgement or condensation of a largerwork or treatise, giving the sense and substance, within smaller compass.’
Notice the tying in of things kept together in an economic context. How does this relate to the commonplacing of ideas (or even the gathering of flowers with florilegia)?
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The Latin noun ‘compendium’, and the phrase ‘via compendiaria’ were used assynonyms for the noun ‘methodus’ during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.23ByLinnaeus’s time, the word was used in Latin book titles to denote a compilation of collocatedtexts that had previously existed as separate works on their own, or which, if removed and distrib-uted separately, could be read without recourse to other parts of the book.
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- Jul 2021
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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1920's slang
- dough, bread: money,
- vamp: (of women)
- Sheik: a attractive man (from Valentino film)
- and how!: indeed!
- putting on the Ritz: dressing up, 1929 Putting on the Ritz with reference to Ritz Hotel
- Ragamuffin: a bedraggled or messy person
- tomato: a pretty woman "ready for the picking"
- wet blanket: a killjoy (used to put out a fire)
- whopee: having a really good time (sex)
- fried, smoked, bent, zozzled, ossified: drunk
- bump off: to kill someone (from gangster culture)
- cheaters: glasses
- hot: stolen
- hock: pawn something for quick cash
- petting party: get together of men and women where kissing or petting occurred
- bob: short haircut style
- heebie jeebies: shaking or trembling as a result of psychological
- it: sex appeal, from eponymous film title starring Clara Bow
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- Jun 2021
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www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
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The viciousness of church politics can rival pretty much any other politics you can name; the difference is that the viciousness within churches is often cloaked in lofty spiritual language and euphemisms.
It would be interesting to examine some of this language and these euphemisms to uncover the change over time.
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- Mar 2021
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davidgerard.co.uk davidgerard.co.uk
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This has taken off hugely.
hugely used in context
Apparently Donald Trumpisms are leaking into broader society, though even here it seems to be used ironically, thus also making fun of Trump himself.
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- Feb 2021
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www.duolingo.com www.duolingo.comDuolingo1
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https://www.duolingo.com/skill/cy/Dillad1/tips-and-notes
This looks like the divergence of the idea of fox and vixen could appear here with mutations in these languages then later entering English.
The pronunciation difference of ff and f also could factor here.
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- Dec 2020
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www.thecut.com www.thecut.com
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It is choosing to adopt what some residents half-jokingly call the “Kumbaya” Montclair mentality.
There's an interesting dichotomous meaning going on here. There's the common "peace, love, and happiness" meaning of the word from the 60's/70's hippies, but there's also the Gullah translation of the original song who's lyric was essentially, "Come by here".
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After the famous comedian Bob Hope popularized the catchphrase “now you’re cooking with gas!” on his 1930s-era radio show, the slogan became synonymous with “modern, efficient, clean.”
Never knew Hope was the progenitor of this idiom.
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- Jun 2020
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drive.google.com drive.google.com
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dandy
this seems to have a different connotation than the one often attributed to the word?
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