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May

OIC’s Greatest Hits: A Global Yea for Wordplay!

by Your friends at OIC on May 17, 2021

5 Signs that Wit and Whimsy Come in Many Languages

Where there’s a word, there’s a way lovers of language will have some fun with it. Idioms, puns, and culturally unique expressions are a part of languages around the globe. And, in this latest collection of OIC’s “Greatest Hits,” our bloggers display their brand of wordplay wizardry with astute observations and forays into that witty world of words. Read more...

Your friends at OIC Comments

Language & Culture/Wordplay/Worldwide Sites

Nov

You Can’t Just Make Up Words—Oh, Really?

by Joyce McGreevy on November 9, 2020

A woman reading the Oxford English Dictionary, a source of implicit language lessons on how to invent a word. (Image by lilbellule789 and PIxabay)

Spoiler alert: This page turner’s ending is all about the . . . zyzzyva!
lilbellule789/ Pixabay l

Language Lesson: How to Invent a Word

It’s become a sitcom trope: One character’s remark prompts another character to retort, “That’s not even a word!” or “You can’t just make up words!”

But according to the most widespread, time-honored language lore, people have been inventing words ever since the guttural grunts of one human first morphed into vocal patterns that made sense to other humans.

Let’s settle this with the world’s shortest language lesson, here. Read more...

Joyce McGreevy 2 Comments

Wordplay

Sep

Voilà! The Poetry of Untranslatable Words

by Meredith Mullins on September 28, 2020

Linguistic trivia says that the Inuits have 50 words for snow. But how, in languages,
do you find the one perfect word to describe something—le mot juste?
© Meredith Mullins

Wordplay with Meaning

We live in challenging times. We have had to become super-adaptable beings, asking ourselves every day how to cope with the multitude of new normals.

What changes emerge?

Have you, like most of the world, savored hyggelig and gezelligheid?

Have you searched for moments of beauty in komorebi, mångata, and psithurism?

Have you had the urge to commit to jijivisha and to integrate firgun and merak into life rhythms? Read more...

Meredith Mullins 8 Comments