Tag Archives: Language

1874: Lost Beauties

Posted on January 25, 2018 by corvusfugit

A few entries from Charles Mackay’s Lost Beauties of the English Language: An Appeal to Authors, Poets, Clergymen and Public Speakers (1874): Airt, the quarter from which the wind blows. “Helter skelter from a’ airts, In swarms the country drives.” … Continue reading →

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1973: Self-Translation

Posted on January 23, 2018 by corvusfugit

Born in Ireland, Samuel Beckett wrote almost exclusively in French after moving to Paris in 1939. He would then translate his novels and plays into English. He wrote the following sentence in his 1946 short story “Premier amour”: Personnellement je … Continue reading →

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44 BC: False Friends

Posted on January 21, 2018 by corvusfugit

When I was a student in Italy, a friend of mine once wanted to tell his host family that he liked the bread because it was made “without preservatives.” Not knowing the Italian for “preservative,” he took what seemed like … Continue reading →

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2015: Mutually Noncoherent Pulses

Posted on October 15, 2017 by corvusfugit

In this study, we carried out a reliable measurement of the mutually noncoherent pulses and their subsequent analysis as the most probable acoustic signals of the hypothetic spoken language of dolphins. As this language exhibits all the design features present … Continue reading →

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1862: Till Hell Freezes Over

Posted on August 17, 2017 by corvusfugit

The phrase “until Hell freezes over” seems to originate during the civil war, as the earliest examples in print date from that time. In his 1869 book, The Life and Campaigns of General U.S. Grant, from Boyhood to his Inauguration … Continue reading →

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1825: Vale of Honey

Posted on July 31, 2017 by corvusfugit

The most contentious aspect of [the mid-19th-century British project to survey Ireland, 1825–46] is the way in which place names were anglicized, replaced by English alternatives or simply mis-recorded….Irish names were altered…mostly through the processes of “dictation” in which a … Continue reading →

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1903: I Like Your Bright Face

Posted on July 23, 2017 by corvusfugit

  Sweet little dandelion! How yellow you are! You are not like the orange. You are made to be seen. The orange is for us to eat. I like your bright face. It looks like one of the stars. I … Continue reading →

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1903: Mission to Ento

Posted on July 23, 2017 by corvusfugit

From the preface to Journeys to the Planet Mars; or, Our Mission to Ento (1903), originally published as Journeys to the Planet Mars, or, Our mission to Ento (Mars): Being a Record of Visits Made to Ento (Mars) by Sara … Continue reading →

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1912: English Lessons

Posted on July 15, 2017 by corvusfugit

NEW WORLD LESSONS FOR OLD WORLD PEOPLES. Lessons in English for Foreign Girls. Thousands of immigrants come to America every year. Some of them have belonged to labor organizations in the old country, many of them have not. Most of … Continue reading →

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1915: Impermanence

Posted on May 28, 2017 by corvusfugit

In 1915, Sigmund Freud published a short essay, “On Transience,” in which he addresses in a succinct and poetic way the ideas he had developed for his book Mourning and Melancholia (1917). For Freud, these two states—mourning and melancholia—are different … Continue reading →

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