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« Mooninite Man sighted | Main | More Astaire » Wednesday, February 14, 2007Language in media resLo and behold, gov'nor, a piece in the (London) Times Literary Supplement that can be described as neat-o. It's a review of "Allen's English Phrases" and it discusses the current, as-we-speak development of the English language -- this is definitely happening, of course -- and the ways that development is being documented. New Web sites like UrbanDictionary, PseudoDictionary, and Doubletongued are not only defining words and phrases at the instant they appear; they're also publishing entries in advance, out of a fun kind of neologistic hope. Hence idioms like these, presumably real and conjured: One can read about irritations such as “carriage cruisers” (“A person who is unable to simply stand in one position on a train and decides . . . to move down the length of the train using the internal doors”) [now illegal in New York--Ed.] and the “Yoko factor” (“A term used to refer to something that splits up a group of friends”). UrbanDictionary is useful; it can be inventive (“slurk” – “a mixture of lurk and sneak”) and funny (“I beg to differ” – “I want to sleep with you”); but, as with so much of Web 2.0, there is more chaff than wheat. But what wheat! The Yoko factor! That joins my internal dictionary instantly, whether or not anyone else is already saying it. Posted by Evan Hughes at 12:34 PM
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