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
Things I probably should have known, but didn’t, and have just recently discovered: one linguistic (on a pronunciation in BrE), one botanical (on the identity of a plant growing on the street a block from my house). How to say it: urinal...
Today’s (4/14) Zippy strip has our Pinhead in conversation with a giant cement duck: (#1) An anatine day in Southampton From the thrillist site, “This Giant Duck on Long Island Has Serious Street Cred” by Jessica Sulima on 11/17/23: (#2)...
Following up on my 4/11 posting “Variability in our mental lives”, about (a)phantasia and (an)auralia, having to do with, respectively, visual and auditory mental experience and their lack: having, or not having, a mind’s eye or a mind’s...
A couple days ago, with my helper Isaac, I was preparing triplefruit trail mix: a large pouch of commercial trail mix — of almonds, cashews, and (dried) cranberries — with added packs of (dried) blueberries and cherries. (A couple...
From the Visit Pittsburgh site, for 4/12’s occasion, “How to Celebrate 412 Day in Pittsburgh”: We love celebrating Pittsburgh every day, but 412 Day is an extra excuse to honor all things Steel City. Whether you live in the 412 or...
The background. In two postings on this blog. — on 8/9/23, in “The states of matter: coconut X”: the spreadable coconut fat (a semi-solid cream I use for daily treatment of my feet, legs, hands, and arms) melts (at around 77F) to to a...
Variability in language — from person to person, and for any particular person, from context to context — is all around us. It’s a routine aspect of our mental lives, amazingly complex in its details, but in no way surprising as a...
E-mail from Ellen Kaisse this morning: I don’t know how I failed to learn this for 60 years or so but Purcell’s cataloguer is a Z person, Franklin Zimmerman. You probably have known forever, but thought I’d mention it just in case. How...
(about sex between men, described in street language — entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest) Welcome to the t-room. The noun t-room (now my favored term; also tearoom): a public men’s room (restroom, lavatory, toilet,...
Continuing my laborious examination of the 2026 MEN.com 5-part DVD The Men’s Room (TMR). So far, two postings on the goofy “human urinal” segment (#1): 4/8 in “human urinal” and 4/9 in “human urinal, the photo album” (nobody expects a...
(raunchily entertaining but utterly unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest) To the photo in my “human urinal” posting yesterday — Tony D’Angelo reacting in surprise to Edward Terrant’s half-man half-pissoir (in a scene from The...
(a brief note about sex between men, described in street language — entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest) The hybrid. From “The Human Urinal” episode of MEN.com’s The Men’s Room DVD (the first scene (of 5) on my recently...
A Jacquie Lawson digital greeting card from my old friend Benita Bendon Campbell (who appears frequently on this blog) for Easter, featuring garden flowers, cresshead eggs (eggshells with human faces drawn on them and with green plants —...
(thoroughly unacceptable for kids and the sexually modest) Or: The swains in Spain / Are effing profane. A posting on the occasion of my scoring my own copy of the gay porn romp Joey’s Surf Vacation (MEN.com, 2024), in which twink Joey...
Walking the neighborhood with Isaac brought us to resting by a planter of weird plants — tall, stiff, hollow tubes in sections, living green things with no hint of flowers or seeds — outside Joe and the Juice at 240 Hamilton Ave. (at...