Arnold Zwicky's Blog
Arnold Zwicky's Blog
Arnold Zwicky
A blog mostly about language from Arnold Zwicky, Adjunt Professor of Linguistics, Stanford University.
Latest Posts
(deeply not for kids or the sexually modest: it’s all about man-on-man sexual acts, though the really hard-core stuff will come in a later posting; this one is mostly about lexicography, but even so, there’s a lot of guys pronging guys...
A tv commercial for the laundry detergent Tide, heard this morning: If it’s got to be clean, then it’s got to be Tide [1] (with the deontic modal of obligation have got to, roughly ‘must’). At this point, I’ll simplify the example...
… And glory shone all around So I sang this afternoon, immersed in the joy of the Christmas season, weeping with pleasure at being able to sing again (and exercise my lungs; my singing is supposed to be both pleasurable and therapeutic),...
rabbit rabbit rabbit to inaugurate the month of December and to begin a new work week Another lesson from a visit a little while back from an old friend and colleague in linguistics in which three meals (deliveries from local...
tiger tiger tiger for the outgoing month of November; and for the first Sunday in Advent, so the beginning of the religious Christmas season — focused on the Christ child — that ends on Epiphany, January 6th; and St. Andrew’s Day, 11/30,...
It’s penultimate November and the day after Black Friday, and the leftovers from Thanksgiving — my leftovers, being quirkily Korean, are surely not much like yours, but I have them and they are wonderful — will live again in other meals...
Briefly noted. In the latest New Yorker issue (of 12/1/25), cartoonist Meredith Southland suggests a solution to the puzzle of what penguins are doing when they waddle around waving their wings in the air: (#1) They are playing Charades!...
From the annals of eccentric wine naming, the remarkable Vampire® Coffin & Cape Red Wine Trilogy from Vampire Vineyards. The three Vampire wine capes. Description on the site: With black velvet on the outside and red silk on the inside....
As soon as the sun rose on November 1st — All Saints Day — the Christmas music began. All of it, including the two monumentally maddening hammer-stroke repetitive songs “The Twelve Days of Christmas” and “The Little Drummer Boy”. My...
The background, from my 11/24 posting “Work weeks”: Back when I still had an academic life, 60 hours a week was the absolutely standard work week, combining teaching, teaching prep, research, publication, preparing and delivering public...
Briefly noted. Lynneguist on Facebook today tracked her work weeks: typically 45 hours, rising to 60 at this point in the fall. I reported: Back when I still had an academic life, 60 hours a week was the absolutely standard work week,...
11 … 2 … 3 it’s Fibonacci day today; the omens foretell 5 in your future, and then 8, and then 13, and then 21, leaping upward in ever-greater jumps, in an elegant spiral of numbers (I used to be a mathematician, and still have a license...
In an old NCIS episode (“Bikini Wax”, S2 E15, 3/29/05), the chief medical examiner Dr. Donald “Ducky” Mallard (played by David McCallum) recollects that he’d considered a career in teaching but didn’t find the idea of lecturing on...
Yesterday, a news story (from an Ohio site) with this summary of its subject, Madelyn Varela: Ohio’s viral lesbian cheesemonger This builds in sound from its onset to its cheesemonger climax, which was something of a surprise (just on...
Tomorrow is 11/22; on my calendar this brings up a set of two deeply discordant anniversaries and the birthday of an admirable colleague and friend. And this year 11/22 is the date of Stanford’s preeminent sporting event, to add a note...