Double Tongued Dictionary: “A passion that goeth before a sprawl.”

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The Double-Tongued Dictionary records undocumented or under-documented words from the fringes of English. It focuses upon slang, jargon, and other niche categories which include new, foreign, hybrid, archaic, obsolete, and rare words.

[This site and the information on it are compiled, edited, and written by Grant Barrett.]

Today is the day after Thanksgiving, and it’s a fat and lazy kind of day. I’m not going the mall. So I thought I would crib today’s post from one of my favorite sources of odd English language phrases, the Double Tongued Dictionary. And that, of course, reminds me of Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, although I guess the two aren’t connected. The quote in the subject line is part of Bierce’s entry for “zeal.” Here are a few recent entries from the Double Tongued Dictionary, starting with one that seems particularly appropriate this time of the year:

vomit draft n. the first rough version of a piece of writing. Related: scanlation, king, English, Arts & Literature, Slang

Citations: 1990 Roger Cohen New York TImes (Aug. 14) “Books of The Times; A Man’s Fight for the Rain Forest”: In one of countless references to himself, he describes how he wrote a 714-page “vomit draft” of the book in the last three months of last year. Even at half that length in its final form, the book is a trifle emetic. 1996 [Randy Witlicki] Usenet: misc.writing.screenplays (Sept. 17) “Re: Help! I Can’t Get Started!!”: Vomit Draft, Junk Writing Tango, etc. There’s lots of names for what you have to do: Write FAST and don’t look back. 2002 Ved Mehta All For Love (Oct.) p. 68: Later, reading her typed notes, I was embarrassed that I had subjected her to what I thought of as a “vomit draft,” from which I hoped to build a narrative one day. 2006 Lois Corcoran Daily Press (Escanaba, Michigan) (Oct. 26) “A novel idea”: And you can join them—even if your grammar grates and your spelling stinks. Your only goal is to finish what’s fondly called the “vomit draft.” Be assured that much of your novel will reek. But just as a slimy oyster shelters a shimmering pearl, so your story will harbor its own gem.

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Posted in: Language, Miscellaneous, Online Places, Writing

Wikidump: This is a list of songs about hair

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This is a list of songs about hair.

“Almost Cut My Hair” – Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young ;”Bangs” – They Might Be Giants; “Bald” – The Darkness; “Cut My Hair” – The Who ; “Cut Your Hair” – Pavement ;”Devil’s Haircut” – Beck ; “Devilock” – The Misfits ; “Five Colours In Her Hair – McFly ; “Fixing Her Hair” – Ani Difranco ; “Get a Haircut” – George Thorogood ;

“Hair” – Hair (musical) ; “Hair”-The Early November ; “Hair” – PJ Harvey ; “Haircut” – Kevin Devine ; “Haircut Economics” – Hot Hot Heat ; “I’m So Bald” – Mr. Mason ; “I Am Not My Hair” – India.Arie ; “I Think I’m Going Bald” – Rush ; “I Won’t Cut My Hair”- D-A-D ; “Le Frisur (entire album)” – Die Ärzte ; “Lend Me Your Comb” – The Beatles ; “Long-Haired Child” – Devendra Banhart ; “Man and Wife, the Latter (Damaged Goods)” – DesaparecidosThe Waifs ; “Pull My Hair” – Bright Eyes ; “Pull My Hair” – Ying Yang Twins ; “Sampson” – Regina Spektor ; “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) – Scott McKenzie ; “Screaming Infidelities”- Dashboard Confessional ;

“The girl I love she got long wavy black hair” – Led Zeppelin ; “Torra Fy Ngwallt N Hir” – Super Furry Animals ; “Who Found Who’s Hair in Who’s Bed? – Owen ; “You’re Not You” – The Good Life ; “Suicide Blonde” by INXS ; “Short Haired Woman – Lightning Hopkins ; “Silver Haired Daddy Of Mine – Johnny Cash and The Carter Family ; “He Took A White Rose from Her Hair – The Carter Family ; “Long Blonde Hair – The Meteors ; “Ain’t Got No Hair – Professor Longhair ; “Black Is the Color Of My True Love’s Hair – Nina Simone ; “Dark Hair’d Rider – Heavy Trash

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “List of songs about hair”. Link may die if entry is finally removed or merged.

This is one of my favorite recent entries from the Wikidump, “The Official Appreciation Page for the Best of the Wikipedia Rejects.” According to the Wikipedia, “This page has been deleted, and should not be recreated without a good reason.” Has the Wikipedia gotten all stuff shirt on us or something? Let’s hope not. There sure are a lot of songs about hair, huh? Who was willing to spend the time to figure all of this out? By the way, they also took out an entry on LisaNova for some reason.

Posted in: Language, Miscellaneous, Online Places, Writing

SEC. RUMSFELD: The problem is the word “it.”

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rumsfeld_saddam.jpg

As a creative exercise in history and language, let me plagiarize what the New York Times said about President Clinton in 1998:

Has the Defense Secretary read too much French literary theory? Is he our first postmodernist, poststructuralist, deconstructionist leader, averring that objectivity is impossible, meaning self-contradictory, and reality socially constructed through language?

No. Mr. Rumsfeld has long realized that language does have a systematic though complex relation to reality. His semantic arguments, if ultimately unsuccessful, have shown an acute understanding of the logic and psychology of language.

The world is analog; language is digital. A tape measure shows that people’s heights vary continuously, but when we talk about them, we face a choice between ”tall” and ”short.” People who describe themselves as ”middle-aged,” ”gray” and ”wise” cannot pinpoint the instant they became so. Words are anchored to endpoints, but the continuum between them may be up for grabs.

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Posted in: Language, War, Writing

Cloud Your Text and Your Class Will Follow!

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A tag cloud (or weighted list in visual design) can be used as a visual depiction of content tags used on a website. Often, more frequently used tags are depicted in a larger font or otherwise emphasized, while the displayed order is generally alphabetical. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. Selecting a single tag within a tag cloud will generally lead to a collection of items that are associated with that tag.

From Wikipedia

Tag generating software is slightly different than tags as traditionally defined. As Wikipedia notes, the original Tag Cloud on the photo sharing site Flikr cleverly represented community interests. Each of the tags is a link to a page of relevant images. The larger the font, the more people there are who share the tag and, presumably, the interests.

Tag generating software, on the other hand, is a way of representing the key terms in a particular text. The larger the word the more often it occurs. Tag Clouds become a quick way to begin the analysis of a text by visually representing its most common terms. Like my example above, it need not have links at all.

The Cloud Tag was generated from my health plan’s page on “Member Rights and Responsibilities.” I think the rhetorical strategies of the text become remarkably obvious. This could be useful for writing as well as analysis.

Here‘s an interesting two-part article on Tag Clouds, by Joe Lamantia. Among other things, Lamantia argues that Clouds are not this year’s “Mullet” but a useful navigation aid likely to become more common. Who else misses the mullet?

I generated my Tag Cloud at Tag Crowd. Tag Crowd’s page also offers the .htm code. And you can try out a Cloud of your own by pasting any text into the box below and pushing the button. Your Cloud will appear below.

This version creates links that look up words in OneLook Dictionary Search. The Graph It button creates a frequency list and a bar graph. Thanks to Karen Schwalm and friends at Glendale Community College for the code.




     

     

Posted in: Language, Online Places, Writing