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Darling starling
. Sturnus vulgaris: an ill-fitting name for so genial a bird (though you’re not quite tame) From treetop to rooftop on sorties incessant With firework-like feathers of dark iridescence. . The second...
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On a wing and a poem
. You may glare And cry “Unfair!” I do not care. I will not share. . A damselfly in no distress Pauses now to take a rest. . Pink-purple funnels, A hovering visitor: Summer encounter. . [Previously:...
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Autumn haiku
. Wind whisks the sea white Whipping sand at face and hands, Turnstones circle low. . . The haiku is yesterday’s; the photo is from February 2009. I’ve shown gulls circling low because I don’t seem to...
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Winter colours
Ireland has had record low temperatures this winter. My corner, the mid-west, has been spared the worst, but we got our share of snow, ice, freezing fog, and biting Arctic winds. All the more reason...
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Walked and kept walking
. . Walked and kept walking till I saw turnstones feeding in soft sunlight falling on an empty shore. So I waited there. . [This was originally a tweet in the heel of winter; it wasn't meant to become...
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Gogarty’s Liffey swans
Irish writer Oliver St. John Gogarty was kidnapped at gunpoint by the IRA on a cold winter night in 1923, during the country’s Civil War. His escape is the stuff of modern romantic legend. W. B. Yeats...
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Terrence Deacon on language evolution
Was it William Burroughs who first described language as a virus from outer space? I’ve always liked the analogy, though it may be more useful to think of language as a symbiont from inner space. In...
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‘Dumb-strike’ in The Goshawk
From The Goshawk, T. H. White’s memorable account of his early experiences with falconry: There was no progress at all that day, and not to go continuously forward was to go back. How often, and for...
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Falconry terms in ‘H is for Hawk’
Revisiting T.H. White’s book The Goshawk last year brought back to me the peculiar lexicon of falconry: its austringer, keeper of goshawks; the creance used to leash hawks in training; and most...
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Kibitzing chess players and editors
After a binge of Ed McBain books a few months ago – they often touch on linguistic topics – this week I picked another of his 87th Precinct series off the unread shelf: Let’s Hear It for the Deaf Man...
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Falconry terms in ‘H is for Hawk’
Revisiting T.H. White’s book The Goshawk last year brought back to me the peculiar lexicon of falconry: its austringer, keeper of goshawks; the creance used to leash hawks in training; and most...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kibitzing chess players and editors
After a binge of Ed McBain books a few months ago – they often touch on linguistic topics – this week I picked another of his 87th Precinct series off the unread shelf: Let’s Hear It for the Deaf Man...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Afterlives of words and birds
I have two new posts up at Macmillan Dictionary Blog. Words change, and that’s OK looks at a new series by Macmillan on word use and language change, and concludes that – despite what language cranks...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Falconry terms in ‘H is for Hawk’
Revisiting T.H. White’s book The Goshawk last year brought back to me the peculiar lexicon of falconry: its austringer, keeper of goshawks; the creance used to leash hawks in training; and most...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kibitzing chess players and editors
After a binge of Ed McBain books a few months ago – they often touch on linguistic topics – this week I picked another of his 87th Precinct series off the unread shelf: Let’s Hear It for the Deaf Man...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Afterlives of words and birds
I have two new posts up at Macmillan Dictionary Blog. Words change, and that’s OK looks at a new series by Macmillan on word use and language change, and concludes that – despite what language cranks...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading coincidences: geese edition
Konrad Lorenz’s books always have wonderful anecdotes about animals, and On Aggression (1963, tr. Marjorie Latzke) is no exception. One chapter describes habit formation in geese, a greylag goose named...
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Hyphenating my little ass-car
There’s an xkcd cartoon popular among copy-editors because it combines fussiness over hyphens with gently risqué humour: Language Log, meeting language lovers’ most niche desires and then some, has a...
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Blogging, tweeting, and . . . tooting on Mastodon?
This is a personal post about social media and blogging, not language, but it does contain a few bilingual puns. I almost joined Mastodon years ago, but I knew few people using it then, and it didn’t...
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