Geoffrey Nunberg

I tried to use as many pretentious big words as I could in this article: "Regardless Of What You Think, 'Irregardless' Is A Word" npr.org/2020/07/07/887…

Is Trump's Call For 'Law And Order' A Coded Racial Message? npr.org/2016/07/28/487…

Quoted in today’s NYT: “Trump’s single-handed effort to revive the slogan ‘law and order’ is the key to creating the perception of a new crisis of crime and violence.” nytimes.com/2020/06/21/opi…

In retrospect, therere are stilll lots of front-runners for words of the century, but if we're going to get there marching under a single banner, it will bear the device, "Put that fucking thing down, will you?"

Ski

The epicurean’s guide to Italian velar orthography; Cs & gs ,soft as Sardinian bonassai, When they precede an e or i, But hard as frozen pizza dough, Before an h, a, u or o.

@PeterSokolowski And run around in embroidered green jackkets. Kermit en vaudroillle!

A reminder that members of the Académie Française, charged with overseeing the dictionary, CARRY SWORDS.

"Fiasco" has been a popular label to describe the seemingly never-ending drama surrounding the Iowa caucuses. For @WSJ, I look at the word's mysterious origins in Italian theatrical slang. bit.ly/fiascobz

@bgzimmer @WSJ A moment’s Zimmering would have turned this up.

@GeoffNunberg @WSJ Been there, done that! wsj.com/articles/the-m…

In this weekend's @WSJ Review section: After the explosion of the "Bolton bombshell," I take a look at the history of the word "bombshell" from armaments to politics. bit.ly/bombshellbz

“Wow”—nice take on a ubiquitous ejaculation for a proceeding whose every turn merits either astonishment or sarcasm. I’m quoted.

“Stop normalizing racism”: Amid backlash, UC-Berkeley apologizes for listing xenophobia under “common reactions” to coronavirus washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01…

@BryanAGarner The singular criteria seems endemic in the Senate—perhaps a nod to a populist groundswell?

"The term "dezinformatsiya" was reputedly coined by no less than Josef Stalin in the 1920s as the name of the section of the KGB tasked with deceiving enemies and influencing public opinion." #Disinformation ☎️ #WordOfTheYear 💬 @GeoffNunberg ischool.berkeley.edu/news/2019/geof…

@lanegreene Also Bowery.

Etymological head-smack of the day: the "-bor" in "neighbor" is related to "bo", "to live in a place", in Danish - Your "neighbor" was your "nigh bo-er". Someone who lived near. I knew that. So far so good.

For Fowler’s sake, just stop saying “epicenter” when you only mean “center.” You know who you are.

In the impeachment trial, John Roberts pulled out the old word "pettifogging" (a back-formation of "pettifogger"). cnn.com/2020/01/22/pol… I wrote about the history of "pettifoggery" in a @WSJ column in 2018, when it popped up in the Mueller probe. wsj.com/articles/petti…

@rhepstein1 @jessesheidlower @fivetonsflax not to mention 'hylopatidaen', which comes in handy in a double dactyl: is.gd/2JKsez

@GeoffNunberg @jessesheidlower @fivetonsflax Incontrovertible.

I don't often bemoan the nonexistence or infrequency of putatively useful words, but I do think that _SIF_ 'single issue fanatic' should be getting a lot more play than it does.

@jessesheidlower @fivetonsflax True enough. I think we should make a special effort to preserve and promote our double dactyls, though, from ‘monomaniacal’ to ‘plenipotentiary’.

@GeoffNunberg @fivetonsflax Geoff! Adding new words to the language doesn't deprive us of the existing ones! You know that ;-) I think it sounds better, and is mildly funny.