When you read news reports about science or medicine, you can amuse yourself by noticing how often the word “prestigious” crops up. You might notice which news organizations make frequent use of the word. You might notice which science-related or medical-related institutions (or whatever) are called “prestigious.” You might ask yourself which of those news […]
Tag: words
The Gendering of the Ear in Early Modern England (new study)
“While critics discuss the link between female speech and sexual looseness, and silence and chastity, many have overlooked the prerequisite for obedience – hearing and its agent, the ear. The link between the ear and vagina is often ignored because of the proneness to perceive ears as passive orifices (Kilgour 131; Woodbridge 256). However, ears […]
“Pernickety” – tracing a word’s origin(s)
The exact origin(s) of the word ‘Pernickety’ are lost in the mists of time. In particular, the Scottish mists of time. Clues nevertheless exist. And have been painstakingly investigated by Professor William Sayers, B.A., fil. kand., M.A., Ph.D., of the Medieval Studies Program, College of Arts and Sciences, at Cornell, who notes that : “In Scotland […]
Unwordy Analysis: Can You Identify Authors by Their Punctuation?
Can you identify who wrote a big chunk of text, if you remove all the words and examine only the punctuation. This new study says that in many cases yes, you can: “Pull Out All the Stops: Textual Analysis Via Punctuation Sequences,” Alexandra N.M. Darmon, Marya Bazzi, Sam D. Howison, and Mason Porter, SocArXiv. January […]