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
I begin the story in medias res, with a May 27th Facebook comment by Probal Dasgupta on a posting of mine: — PB > AZ: Speaking of the way one pronounces the acronym “AZ”, I’ve been puzzled by the fact that some function words that end in...
Every year, for me this day (June 5th) is one of the most emotionally difficult days of the year; it’s my man Jacques Transue’s death day, in the bright early summer of what unfolded as the disastrous year 2003. Jacques died, after all...
(dripping with raunchy sexual content, entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest) Not what TSE had in mind, but peach-eating was the topic for some bros in a Facebook reel that came by me this morning. Another chapter in the...
(high sexual content, not for kids or the sexually modest) Lexicographic notes from Young America, heard on Facebook reels from bros in their 20s discussing sexual matters in a mostly bantering way: the verb to collab. Collected this...
On Facebook on 5/28, Bert Vaux reported on responses to a query of his on curtains vs. drapes. On that posting, an incidental comment by Heidi Harley: Did anyone [among BV’s respondents] mention that you can’t threaten anyone with the...
(not the cartoonist’s fault, but my discussion veers occasionally onto fellatio, in vulgar street language, and that’s out of bounds for kids and the sexually modest) The Pearls Before Swine strip of 5/31, Stephan Pastis’s farewell to...
… all fictional, unimaginably different, each one moving in its own way; welcome to the queen of the months, here in the northern hemisphere, where, on this celebratory day, the rabbits — — come to play Ir starts with a burlesque of the...
Hey, there, server lad, Have you any wool? Yes, sir, yes, sir, One alpaca full! This Drew Dernavich cartoon in the 6/1/26 issue of the New Yorker: A wonderfully absurd riff on the custom of restaurant servers offering freshly ground...
tiger tier tiger for ultimate May, the gateway to the sultry rabbits of summer, those promiscuous creatures of the great queen, Juno (is it hot in here?) A follow-up to my 5/29 posting “Three mishearings”, with yet another surprising...
(the third mishearing takes us, in street language, into fellatio-land, a place not suitable for kids or the sexually modest) Recently logged, three mishearings of televised reels, two from commercials, one from a joke reel on Facebook,...
The Wayno / Piraro Bizarro of 5/26: A Wayno Psychiatrist cartoon, this time with couples therapy in which the couples’s conflicts are referred to the attitudes of their inner children, one of whom is said to be infected with the dreaded...
The Stanford linguistics AZ community — adjunct faculty Annie Zaenen and Arnold M. Zwicky, graduate student Anissa Zaitsu — is pleased to announce the PhD dissertation oral presentation of one of its little band: The Landscape of...
(a dip into the rhetorical organization of texts and into figurative language, but getting its raw material from gay porn and so it’s going to be entirely unsuitable for kids and the sexually modest) In the opening of Raging Stallion’s...
(genitals and sex acts discussed in street language, so not for kids or the sexually modest) From the Monty Python fandom wiki: Biggus Dickus is a fictional character in the Monty Python film Life of Brian, portrayed by Graham Chapman....
Yesterday, in my posting “Sir, I bring you a token of my subservience”, a Zippy strip in which Griffy addresses a Muffler Man, offering the fiberglass giant a phallic offering to his superior masculinity. It turns out that this strip is...