Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Unintended Indecency at Burger King
From Michael Quinion’s WorldWideWords newsletter this week:
- I found this in the Observer for 23 October: “At first my sister
and I used nets to catch minnows in the local river, but on my
first proper fly-fishing trip, when I was eight, I caught an 8lb
rainbow trout and was absolutely hooked.”- “I went to my local Burger King last night,” writes Douglas Yates,
“and found that the staff member serving me had a sign on top of
her till saying ‘I am being trained. Please bare with me’. Although
she was a most attractive young lady, I politely declined her kind
offer.”
‘On Language’ 11/2: A sizable book on short words
Dictionary author really did research to the letter
‘On Language‘
Chicago Tribune
November 2, 2005
By Nathan Bierma
temp.link/perm.preview
Four-letter words are not in short supply, as you know when you stub your toe.
But one-letter words? What are there—two or three of them?
Try 1,000, says Craig Conley, author of “One-Letter Words: A Dictionary” (HarperCollins, 272 pages, $16.95).
Since Merriam-Webster defines “word” as “a speech sound ... that symbolizes and communicates a meaning,” individual letters do indeed qualify. “So even though there are only twenty-six letters in the English alphabet, my research shows that they stand for 1,000 distinct units of meaning,” Conley writes.
Conley, who lives in Chapel Hill, N.C., and identifies himself at his Web site as “a curator, benefactor, philosopher, author, music producer, and documentarian,” shows that “X” alone has more than 70 meanings (including a mark on a treasure map; an incorrect answer; a symbol for multiplication; a rating for an adult movie; an axis on a graph; a chromosome; a kiss in a letter; and even a virus called “x-disease.”)
...