Donald Trump just signed an executive order making English the official language of the United States. We’ve never had an official language before, at least not formally. Yes, English has always been the de facto official language, but it’s never been the official official language before now. According to NPR, this erases a Bill Clinton…
Defenestration means “the action of throwing someone out of a window”. Why do we need a word that means throwing someone out of a window? It seems weird to me. As someone who took Latin, the derivation is easy. It is “de” which means “out” and “fenestra” which means window. So, it’s a word meaning…
It seems like whenever someone wins something, an award or a race or something, they say that it makes them humble. Apparently, winning gold at the Olympics is a humbling experience. I always find the statements confusing. I guess I don’t know what all those winners mean by humble. According to the internet, there are…
Unique is one of the emptiest words in the English language. It means, as I’m sure you all know, one of a kind. Something is unique if there’s nothing else like it. The problem is everything that is is unique in some way. (There were a lot of is’s in that sentence) People are sure…
One of the big fears people have with ChatGPT and its ilk is that people will take credit for writing things that were actually written by an AI. Often the talk centers around plagiarism (although I don’t think that’s the right word for it), but I’m more interested in assigning credit where it’s due in…
I think everyone knows that X is the sexiest letter. X is the kisses part of hugs and kisses. XXX is the rating for, ahem, adult movies. No other letter carries connotations quite like X. My question is simple. Why? X is the third letter of the words sex, sexual, sexuality, sexy, etc. Are there…
Knowingness is, “a posture of always ‘already knowing’, of purporting to know the answers even before the question arises.” According to Jonathan Malesic, knowingness is a bigger problem than misinformation and echo chambers. I’m inclined to agree. Malesic makes an argument that I’ve been trying to articulate for a while now. I think I struggled…
I just read an article by Helen Betya Rubinstein called “Against Copyediting: Is It Time to Abolish the Department of Corrections?“. It’s on the long side, but it’s a good read. The basic idea is that copyediting does more harm than good. It is so focused on making things “correct” that it acts to prop…
According to the internet, “all is well” is correct while “all is good” is incorrect. I get that, while normally an adverb, well does have an adjectival use. It can mean good. So, “all is well” can mean that all is good. What I don’t understand is how “all is good” can be wrong. The…
The first two posts are here and here. Yesterday I “wrote” a post describing what ChatGPT is. The reason wrote is in quotes is because, in reality, I only wrote the first three sentences. The rest was written by ChatGPT. It was a little experiment. I’m curious how many people who read that post knew…
