Diagnosis - Chronic Word Otaku

Prognosis - No Hope Of Recovery

[digitalghost]

Thanks to the Japanese, I have a new word to describe my condition, Otaku. And it sounds much better than obsession. And my otaku goes much deeper than just the meaning of words, I have to know the roots of words, the history of words, I want to learn new words and foreign words phrases and their origins and I want to know which people use which words.

I'll be there with bells on? What? Had to find out how the phrase came to be. Dressed to the nines? What? Look it up. Is there a difference between explain and expatiate? Of course. But it is subtle.

Do you find it interesting that medal, meddle, metal, mettle are almost perfect homonyms? What about karat, caret, carat and carrot? Do you ever have gloves in the glove box of your car? Why, when they hand you the bill in a restaurant, do they refer to it as a check?

Do you press or iron your shirts? Which sounds better, cellar door or basement door? Do you mow your lawn or cut the grass? Have you ever really considered using 'remuneration' in a sentence? People speak, but speakers give speeches. Why? And if you give a speech, take care not to orate. Or bloviate.

Have you ever looked up the etymology of entymology? Or wondered if the word 'knight' had anything to do with 'equine'? Do you cringe when you hear someone say, 'irregardless'? When someone says 'mute point' do you want to scream the word moot? Do you suffer from chronic word otaku?

[SilverLining]

A trend in the UK is "I was sat there"... W.T.F.

[Syzygy]

The plural of index is indices, not indexes.

According to the Collins English Dictionary both indices and indexes can be used as the plural of index.

...nor do they feel the need to correct incorrect usage in fora, and woe to those that feel superior when they see someone struggle with usage or spelling, for their own mistakes will out. Mine certainly do.

Ouch! Sorry!

;-)

Syzygy

[digitalghost]

>>both indices and indexes can be used as the plural of index.

Only because there's a bunch of boneheads out there that dictionary editors need to cater to... ;) I ain't a gonna accept no such corruption of the language simply because people's vocabularies are a'shrinkin'.

How can you tell the web is 15 years old? It's obsessed with sex, lousy at spelling and grammar and pretty much does nothing ~Fark

[Syzygy]

Interesting and entertaining article from The Times on the ever-expanding lexicon, and the effect the web has on it:

...this newspaper reported the existence, in the Bantu language Tshiluba, of the long-needed word ilunga, meaning “a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time”. Subsequent investigations suggested that the word may not exist in Tshiluba, but it exists now in English, as thousands of entries on the web attest, and the language is better for it.

We're all speaking geek [timesonline.co.uk]

Syzygy