Predicting New Words

Predicting New Words PDF Author: Allan A. Metcalf
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618130085
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Examines the phenomenon of new word creation, offering criteria for predicting the success of new words and including the American Dialect Society's listing of words of the year from 1991 to 2001.

Predicting New Words

Predicting New Words PDF Author: Allan A. Metcalf
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618130085
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Examines the phenomenon of new word creation, offering criteria for predicting the success of new words and including the American Dialect Society's listing of words of the year from 1991 to 2001.

The Hidden History of Coined Words

The Hidden History of Coined Words PDF Author: Ralph Keyes
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190466782
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Successful word-coinages--those that stay in currency for a good long time--tend to conceal their beginnings. We take them at face value and rarely when and where they were first minted. Engaging, illuminating, and authoritative, Ralph Keyes's The Hidden History of Coined Words explores the etymological underworld of terms and expressions and uncovers plenty of hidden gems. He also finds some fascinating patterns, such as that successful neologisms are as likely to be created by chance as by design. A remarkable number of new words were coined whimsically, originally intended to troll or taunt. Knickers, for example, resulted from a hoax; big bang from an insult. Casual wisecracking produced software, crowdsource, and blog. More than a few resulted from happy accidents, such as typos, mistranslations, and mishearing (bigly and buttonhole), or from being taken entirely out of context (robotics). Neologizers (a Thomas Jefferson coinage) include not just scholars and writers but cartoonists, columnists, children's book authors. Wimp originated with a book series, as did goop, and nerd from a book by Dr. Seuss. Coinages are often contested, controversy swirling around such terms as gonzo, mojo, and booty call. Keyes considers all contenders, while also leading us through the fray between new word partisans, and those who resist them strenuously. He concludes with advice about how to make your own successful coinage. The Hidden History of Coined Words will appeal not just to word mavens but history buffs, trivia contesters, and anyone who loves the immersive power of language.

Presidential Voices

Presidential Voices PDF Author: Allan Metcalf
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780547350301
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Perhaps more than anyone else, politicians are what they say — and how they say it. In Presidential Voices, Metcalf examines both how the presidents have spoken to the American public and how the American public has wanted its presidents to speak. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, Metcalf shows what contemporaries have said about the chief speakers in the White House. He explores the distinctive words that our presidents favored (and in many cases coined), along with the regional accents that livened the Oval Office. In addition, he uncovers the hidden influence of speechwriters and the changing media on how presidents present themselves to voters. He concludes his survey of presidential speech with entertaining linguistic portraits of all forty-three presidents. From Silent Cal to the Great Communicator, Presidential Voices sheds new and original light on the ways in which our commanders in chief have commanded the language. After reading this book, you will never again take what our president says for granted.

Frequency in Language

Frequency in Language PDF Author: Dagmar Divjak
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107085756
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
Re-examines frequency, entrenchment and salience, three foundational concepts in usage-based linguistics, through the prism of learning, memory, and attention.

Duck on a Bike

Duck on a Bike PDF Author: David Shannon
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
ISBN: 0545530032
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 42

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Book Description
In this off-beat book perfect for reading aloud, a Caldecott Honor winner shares the story of a duck who rides a bike with hilarious results. One day down on the farm, Duck got a wild idea. “I bet I could ride a bike,” he thought. He waddled over to where the boy parked his bike, climbed on, and began to ride. At first, he rode slowly and he wobbled a lot, but it was fun! Duck rode past Cow and waved to her. “Hello, Cow!” said Duck. “Moo,” said Cow. But what she thought was, “A duck on a bike? That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever seen!” And so, Duck rides past Sheep, Horse, and all the other barnyard animals. Suddenly, a group of kids ride by on their bikes and run into the farmhouse, leaving the bikes outside. Now ALL the animals can ride bikes, just like Duck! Praise for Duck on a Bike “Shannon serves up a sunny blend of humor and action in this delightful tale of a Duck who spies a red bicycle one day and gets “a wild idea” . . . Add to all this the abundant opportunity for youngsters to chime in with barnyard responses (“M-o-o-o”; “Cluck! Cluck!”), and the result is one swell read-aloud, packed with freewheeling fun.” —Publishers Weekly “Grab your funny bone—Shannon . . . rides again! . . . A “quackerjack” of a terrific escapade.” —Kirkus Reviews

PreDictionary

PreDictionary PDF Author: Mikhail Epstein
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1257831895
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 143

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Book Description


A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes

A New Index for Predicting Catastrophes PDF Author: Madhur Anand
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 0771006985
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
A striking poetic debut that brilliantly illuminates and celebrates the intersection of poetry and science, and the ways they can mediate our discovery of the world and our place in it. Originating from her living room, backyard garden, university office, or the field sites in boreal or tropical forests, the poems in Madhur Anand’s captivating debut collection compose a lyric science; they bring order and chaos together into a unified theory of predicting catastrophes, large and small. Anand’s ecologist poetics are sophisticated and original; her voice is an “index,” a way of cataloguing and measuring the world and human experience, and of illuminating the interconnectedness at the heart of all things. Narrating the beauty of her perceived world, the poems unabashedly embrace the scintillant language of scientific evidence as they interrogate crises of personal and global concern. The result is a poetry that is as complex as it is compassionate. Anand’s modernist intervention into “nature” poetry is a sparkling addition to poetics in Canada and beyond.

Wordwatching

Wordwatching PDF Author: Alex Horne
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0753547880
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Alex Horne loves words. He loves them so much, in fact, that he's gone on a mental safari and invented some of his own ... all he needs to do now is get them into the dictionary. But, as Alex discovers, gaining entry into the official lexicon takes more than just a gentle word in the ear of the editor. Evidence is required - Alex needs what the dictionary authorities call a 'corpus' of examples, hard data showing that his new words are in widespread and long-term usage by people other than just him and his mum. So a corpus he resolves to create, no matter what obstacles he might meet on the way. This is the ridiculous story of one man's struggle to break into the dictionary. From covert word-dropping on Countdown to wilfully misinforming young schoolchildren, Alex tries it all in his quest for word-based stardom. Does he succeed? Exactly what is a 'mental safari'? And are you already using one of Alex's words without realising it? You won't regret spending your hard-earned honk on this hugely entertaining book.

Lexicography of Coronavirus-related Neologisms

Lexicography of Coronavirus-related Neologisms PDF Author: Annette Klosa-Kückelhaus
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 311079831X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This volume brings together contributions by international experts reflecting on Covid19-related neologisms and their lexicographic processing and representation. The papers analyze new words, new meanings of existing words, and new multiword units, where they come from, how they are transmitted (or differ) across languages, and how their use and meaning are reflected in dictionaries of all sorts. Recent trends in as many as ten languages are considered, including general and specialized language, monolingual as well as bilingual and printed as well as online dictionaries.

Learning to Read

Learning to Read PDF Author: Hazel Francis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135123692X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Originally published in 1982. This book charts the reading progress of ten children through their first three years at school, concentrating particularly on their problems and the ways they coped with them. The author uses these case studies to analyse the children's understanding, experience of behaviour associated with literacy, and developing knowledge of spelling in the early stages of learning to read. Her analysis of the children's difficulties and successes, against the background of their home experience, classroom activities and teachers' methods, calls in question any simplistic generalisations about the ways that background and teaching method can affect reading progress.