Just someone who's passionate about language. Any pronouns except he/him.
Edinburgh, Scotland
Joined November 2017
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Distinguished Linguist retweeted
Words that turn 100 in 2025 include sweatshirt, motel, recycle and group therapy.
Distinguished Linguist retweeted
A 2015 physics paper titled ‘What if the entire Earth was instantaneously replaced with an equal volume of closely packed, but uncompressed blueberries?’ concluded that if the Earth did turn into a pile of blueberries, everything would explode.
Distinguished Linguist retweeted
Very happy to read that 'hurkle-durkle', meaning to stay in bed *long* after it's time to get up, is being revived in current US slang, having lain dormant for 150 years! It's about time.
lifehacker.com/entertainment…
Distinguished Linguist retweeted
Word of the day is ‘quockerwodger’ (19th century): a puppet politician whose strings are pulled entirely by someone else.
Distinguished Linguist retweeted
There’s a rhyming Italian expression for saying “take it or leave it” that goes o mangi questa minestra o salti dalla finestra. It means “either eat this soup or throw yourself out the window”
Distinguished Linguist retweeted
An especially brutal Swiss insult is Meitlivelosattelschmöcker. It means “he who sniffs the saddles of girls’ bikes”
Distinguished Linguist retweeted
i was thinking “porn is a weird word, i wonder where it comes from” and in a moment of genius intellect i googled “porn” assuming that the first thing to come up would be a resource like a definition or wikipedia page which could show etymology. this was not the case.
Distinguished Linguist retweeted
Toddler brains are so incredible. We were at the park & the kiddo/parent at the swings next to us were speaking Armenian & my daughter started talking to them in Armenian despite our family being 0% Armenian. She must be picking it up at school. Like hey you can't put on shoes but you can casually learn a new language.
Distinguished Linguist retweeted
Arabic did diverge, its speakers just consider themselves to be speaking the same language (with the notable exception of Maltese), while Romance speakers consider their languages to be distinct. Romance speakers only “stopped speaking Latin” bc they decided they did
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Another year another @nycmidnight 250-word microfiction challenge. Let's go 😎 nycmidnight.com/250
Distinguished Linguist retweeted
A charming medieval word for a simpleton or someone who is a bit silly is a 'peekgoose'.
Distinguished Linguist retweeted
As a white women who’s ancestors probably lived in Yorkshire caves along with the woolly mammoth (based on DNA test results showing nothing exotic), I can tell you that I’d take living alongside asylum seekers & Muslim families over fat, vest wearing, bad teeth English racists 🏴
