English

hooked & hooker

Only recently I realised the metaphor behind hooked: If you’re on the hook, you’re addicted. OK wow yay – and ehm yes, quite straightforward, actually. So I wondered if there are any other metaphors with hooks. And obviously there’s hooker ‚prostitute’—Were they thought to lure their clients in…? Well, maybe. There’s a theory that attributes the development of this meaning of hooker to a US Civil War general called Hooker. Read on…

The case against language policing and grammar snobbery

I’m an avid listener of podcasts. As there’s more good stuff to listen to than I have time for, I’ve also become a collector of podcasts. That’s why I only now listened to an old episode of Talk the Talk discussing „grammar elitism“. (The podcast has since been renamed to Because Language — I really feel caught up in the past now, thanks.) I highly recommend to treat yourself to the whole episode — it’s both entertaining and inspiring. Read on…

Logs that burn and logs that swim

Every new medium needs its own lingo. Let’s say you build an network of machines that store and show information. You could call it infocity; first you enter and then you request information stored in some – building? Well, we went with internet or web, you log onto it and this here is not a building, but a blog. Read on…

hover ≠ hoover

I never know which is which. One is sucking air in clinging to the floor, the other one is keeping air between itself and the floor. Read on…

Metaphors from around the globe

On Superlinguo I stumbled over some drawings from a celebration of International Mother Language Day. The idea is very simple but quite cool: share your favourite idiom! Read on…