"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...
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
6/09/2009
on the cusp
Labels:
english,
language,
one million,
quendy-trendy
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