GuysBlog

Thanks to Eric Meyer, I found the What is your grammar aptitude? quiz. Its banner is subtitled, in very tiny print:

Do people call you a “grammar Nazi?” Do you hate people who constantly pick on your spelling or grammar? This quiz will determine if those people are correct. Just don’t come crying to me if you fail. After all, it’s not my fault you’re stupid.

Naturally, like Eric, I am diagnosed as a “grammar Fuhrer.”

Naturally, I must point out that the correct spelling is “Führer.”

*sigh*

According to an article in today’s New York Times (registration required), entitled “Yours Not So Truly, J. Goodspam,” a gentleman by the seemingly improbable name of August Kleimo has produced a random name generator. It seems that he harvested the information from the U. S. Census Bureau’s Web site. The names came from the 1990 census, so they are reasonably current.

Authors, technical writers, and spammers might find it useful. — but I would worry about bandwidth for at least a few days, Mr. Kleimo.

What the heck does copacetic mean, anyway?

Is it the same thing as “it’s all good”?

I guess it is what it is.

What do these terms have in common?

“paracopyright”, “packing and cracking”, “cyberbalkanization”, “spim”, “white food”,
“hathos”, “passive overeating”, “floortime”, “quiet party”, “419 scam”

The’re all recent entries in a web site named “The Word Spy”, which describes itself thusly:

This Web site is devoted to recently coined words and phrases, and to old words that are being used in new ways. These aren’t “stunt words” or “sniglets,” but new terms that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, Web sites, and other recorded sources.

Now, I’m not so sure about the “recently coined” part… looking down their list of “other recent additions” I see “lipstick lesbian” which doesn’t seem all that new to me. Maybe it’s just the circles I travel in. But, recent or not, it’s lots of fun.

For the geeks among us, they also offer “The Tech Word Spy”.

You can receive its postings by e-mail or by RSS subscription. Thanks to Molly for the tip.

Ever get a song stuck in your head? “It’s a Small World Aaaaafter Alllllll”?

Here, in MSNBC, they report that “James Kellaris, a marketing professor at the University of Cincinnati” has studied “How unwelcome songs get stuck in our heads — and how to unstick them.”

Now, they say that he calls them earworms, as though this was a new label, but this term has been around for years, and is just a translation from the German: “Ohrwurm.”

That citation is to The WordSpy: a “web site and its associated mailing list are devoted to recently coined words and phrases, old words that are being used in new ways, and existing words that have enjoyed a recent renaissance.”

Thanks are due to Katharine O’Moore-Klopf, of the COPYEDITING-L mailing list, for bringing the “earworm” article to my attention.