6/09/2009

on the cusp

"For there seems to be a word for every concept, imaginable and many unimaginable. My favourite for years was "mallemaroking", which an early edition defined as "the carousing of drunken seamen aboard ice-bound Greenland whaling ships", which struck me as a masterly example of hairline linguistic precision."

This coming Wednesday, the 1,000,000th word is scheduled to be absorbed into the English lexicon.
The Telegraph has a pretty fun article about it all, as well as the shortlist of possible finalists. Half of them make me ashamed to speak the language...

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