(b)logophile

Catching up on blog posts from my holiday I saw the cover for a book named Northworld: Vengeance on Good Show Sir (a blog devoted to “only the worst sci-fi/fantasy book covers” — and indeed, this one is awful). “Northworld,” I thought to myself, “what kind of nonsense is that?” According to one commentator the [...]

I just learnt the Dutch verb verstenen, “to fossilise” (used in the context of grammatical fossilisation, so it’s really a close parallel to the English). The lovely thing is that this is nearly compositional meaning: steen is “stone” (so stenen as verb would be “to stone” [don't know if it's actually used that way?]), and [...]

It’s Māori language week (te wiki o te reo Māori) in Aotearoa (New Zealand), and although I’m ashamed of how little I can remember, here’s a few links for anyone interested. Wikipedia has a good entry on the language, with a bunch of outside links. There’s also a site for learning and a translating dictionary [...]

To lighten the mood a little, here’s a magnificent malapropism coined by Fabrice in the pub last night: to smoke like a chainsaw. It currently gets one Google hit, with a title Fabrice might not appreciate.

Quick links to a week’s worth of browsing: Design: flowerlike lightbulb unfurls as it warms up. [via sensory impact] Craziness: every year two Greek monasteries bombard each other with fireworks. [via Nemo Ramjet] Life/art mutual imitation: A British explorer disappears in the Amazon jungle, while looking for a lost city. Attempts to find his remains, [...]