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What does it mean to be “quite interesting”?
Archive for the ‘Language and usage’ Category
August 18th, 2009
Is it too much to ask that when commentators make confident statements about the reconciliation process and health care that they provide evidence for their position? Apparently. No one has yet shown why this cannot be done.
July 23rd, 2009
Category: Language and usage
Since very few of us ride horses these days, perhaps we ought to admit that “free rein” is a dead metaphor and give it a decent burial. But if it’s to be used, it could at least be used correctly.
July 21st, 2009
Evangelical Christian groups that claim to support Israel are misrepresenting themselves. They are not Zionists: they are anti-Zionists, and they should be called that.
May 30th, 2009
Brad DeLong raps my knuckles for being cavalier about the sentence talking heads have been endlessly parsing from Sotomayor’s Berkeley speech. Here’s the full paragraph:
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and [...]
May 28th, 2009
Category: Language and usage, Watching Conservatives
What do you call a dsigraced former House speaker who is also a “loggorheic ideological narcissist with a twitter account?”
May 27th, 2009
Category: Language and usage
Turns out that “testamentum” is St. Jerome’s translation of the Greek διαθήκη, which can mean either “covenant” or “will,” and which the Septuagint uses to translate the Hebrew b’rith.
May 22nd, 2009
Category: Language and usage
No, rabbis imitating the bad behavior of priests is not, strictly speaking, ecumenical activity; it’s really interfaith work.
May 21st, 2009
Category: Language and usage
“Testimony” is evidence given by a witness.
A “testament” is a compact.
April 3rd, 2009
Category: Language and usage, The wayward press
Why does the Red River of the North do like it do? Because the country it flows through is so flat. How flat?
… the river flows very slowly across a pancake-flat landscape. Imagine raising an eight-foot-long sheet of plywood just enough to slip a single sheet of paper under the raised end. The resulting minuscule [...]
