There’s and old saying that the computing industry is confusing mass of TLAs (Three-Letter Acronyms) and ETLAs (Extended Three-Letter Acronyms[…]
Read more
Category: Language
A Rough Guide to Rude Rhyming Slang
Over-excited Puddings and Other Odd Origins
Whether you’re miffed, waffling, ticket-boo or taking the Mickey, the English language is full of words with odd derivations. Just don’t pop your clogs before reading this…
Read more
Four Candles
Cross-eyed bears and friendly ants
My late mother thought Gladly was rather a nice name for a bear, but as a child she could never[…]
Read more
The 8 longest words in English
The longest word in the English language is a whisker under 190,000 letters long and would take over an hour[…]
Read more
Using two words instead of one
Benjamin Dreyer has compiled a list of redundancies, surplus words to delete from your writing where you’ve used two words[…]
Read more
12 Odd Idioms
Some years ago, a German friend – who speaks very good English – was visiting New Zealand and boarded a[…]
Read more
The Nautical Derivation of Well-known Words and Phrases
Many familiar English words and phrases have interesting derivations, and because England was once a great sea power, a surprising[…]
Read more