Lisa from Sophistechate has built a refurbished feed for Wordie lists using Yahoo! Pipes. It takes the feed from any list page, and adds the row of lookup favicons that appear under the words on the site to the words in the feed. Like so.

One thing to note is that once you've generated the pipe, you won't immediately see the transmogrified feed on the Pipes page, which threw me at first. You first need to click the 'My Yahoo,' 'Add to Google', or, to see the raw feed, 'More options' link.

Thanks Lisa! This joins angharad and uselessness's Wordie Bookmarklet as another very cool member-contributed utility.

Labels: feeds, pipes, sophistechate, Yahoo

It's been a while since I bragged about a Wordie media mention*, but I liked the tone of this one: yesterday Wordie was chosen as the Yahoo! Pick of the Day. The kicker says it all: "¡Que viva Wordie! Romp through the "recent words" section, acquaint yourself with the top 100 citers, linger among the most recent themed attractions, and then declare yourself a wordie. Go forth, friends, and flourish linguistically."

Right on, Yahoo!**. Right on.

* To balance the scales, here's a gem from the archives. Read this list bottom to top.
** Question: if Yahoo! is the last word in a sentence, do you still use closing punctuation? It makes sense that you would, but man, it's chugly.

Labels: Yahoo

While sniffing around for frostitute usages yesterday I stumbled across lingofactory.tribe.net. Wordie is many things to many people, one of which is a neological playground. In that sense it shares a common mission with lingofactory: to seed the world with madeupical words.

One notable difference is that lingofactory has a "publish or perish" policy: non-particating lurkers are subject to eviction. Wordie will never be so harsh, but I have to say, I admire their ruthlessness.

Labels: frostitute, lingofactory, madeupical, neologism

Here are a few more glossaries, which have also been added to the canonical Glossaralia post. My favorites in this batch are the weather terms and, despite the cheesois design, the Harry Potter words, many of which include audio files illustrating their pronunciation, or one person's interpretation thereof. A nice touch.

Thanks to Cooper Green for the radio glossary, Katie for the investing and business links, and reesetee for the subtitling link. The glossaries:

Building Terms (contractorslicense.com)
Business Dictionary (BusinessDictionary.com)
Glossary of Cheese Terms (Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board)
Glossaries (glossarist.com, contains lots of broken links)
Harry Potter (Harry Potter Word Wizard, with audio)
Investing and Finance (investorwords.com)
Online News Terms (USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review)
Printmaking Terms (University of Kansas Spencer Museum of Art)
Radio terms (University of Delaware)
Subtitler's and Translator's Tools (transedit.se)
Weather Terms (weather.com)

Labels: cheese, glossaries, weather

For your literate friends and loved ones, a selection of gift ideas. Items are divided into three sections: stuff, books, and good causes.

Stuff

"Bookinist" chair. For the Wordie who has everything. It has space for 80 or so books, a built-in reading light, a secret compartment in the arms for your bifocals or whatever, and a wheel. €2,127 (US$3,154), presumably not including shipping from Germany.



Typewriter font coasters. For the Wordie who likes to drink. They're from the Sundance catalog, which is kind of like the J. Peterman Catalog, but not as classy. The about page is unbearable: "In the beginning for us there was no end. Now, it's hard to remember the beginning." Robert Redford: not a Wordie. $8.



Typewriter key cuff links. For the well-dressed Wordie. Available in different keys. $38.




This is prolly my awesomest shirt. For the ironic Wordie. I threw this in because I know how many Wordies detest the words "prolly" and "awesome." I saw some dude wearing this at my gym and wanted to hug him, but restrained myself, 'cause he prolly would have knocked my teeth out. $21.97.



Scrabble jewelry. For the Wordie who really, really likes Scrabble. Charm, $28. Also available: cufflinks, $85; necklace, $39.95.




Crappuccino Mug. For Wordies who support Wordie... and can't resist a frothy mug of crappuccino. $12.99.




VoxTec Phraselator. For Wordies abroad. Developed for the U.S. military. Translates phrases from English into one of 60 other languages. It can't translate in the other direction, but that doesn't matter, since Americans don't listen to foreigners. $2300.





Magnetic Poetry. For poets, I guess. Very retro '90s, but still a crowd pleaser. $19.95.





Wrap a laptop with words. A little more DIY than the others, which is part of the appeal. Use a word list in cloud view as source material, or any other text. Around €25 (~US$37), including shipping.






Fischer Space Pen. For Wordies in Space. Also works well in New Jersey. Note that this image is not to scale: the Space Pen is not actually the same size as an astronaut. $50.







Flowbee. For the well-coiffed Wordie. This has nothing to do with words, other than having an awesome name, and just being... awesome. $59.95.





Sesquipedalian Onesie. Another fine Wordie product. All babies are aspiring Wordies. $10.99.






Books


The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two, by Anu Garag. $10.40.
Anu is the impressario behind WordSmith.org, and has been since 1994. I love that the title includes one of my favorite words ever.






That's Amore!: The Language of Love for Lovers of Language, by Erin McKean. $8.07.
From Erin McKean, lexicographer to the stars and editor of the New Oxford American Dictionary. I've heard her other books are great too.





The Professor and the Madman, by Simon Winchester. The classic true story of murder, insanity, and dictionaries. $11.16.






The F-Word, noted lexicographer and OED editor-at-large Jesse Sheidlower's illustrated lexicon of the word "fuck." $11.40.






On Bullshit, by Harry G. Frankfurt. Which totally sounds like a fake name--c'mon, Harry Wiener? He's for real, though. He's a licensed philosopher, at Princeton. This is perhaps more about meaning than language, though the two are intertwined, one would hope. In any case, it makes a fine companion volume to "The F-Word". $9.95.





The Canadian Oxford Dictionary. Whether you're a Canadian, or just wish you were, you now have a first-rate dictionary from which to learn the origins of cougar, poutine, shit disturber, and other exotic gifts from the north. $32.59.




Far from the Madding Gerund and Other Dispatches from Language Log, by Mark Liberman and Geoffrey K. Pullum. $22.00.
From the folks behind the language log blog.






Mo' Urban Dictionary: Ridonkulous Street Slang Defined, compiled by Aaron Peckham.

Urban Dictionary is like Wordie's bad older brother, who taught it to smoke and swear. That doesn't stop me from thinking it wasn't a great idea to put "ridonkulous" in the title.



The Oxford English Dictionary, edited by John Simpson and Edmund Weiner. Twenty volumes, 22,000 pages, 500,000 words, 2.5 million quotations. You know you want it. $6,295.00 for the blue leather edition, or $995.00 for the regular binding, plus $60.25 shipping. Or get the CD-ROM version (yes, they still make those) for only $235.00. Or a one year subscription to the online version for $295.00.

Would someone who works at a library please put the CD-ROMs on bittorrent? Please?


Good Causes


826 Valencia
"826 Valencia is dedicated to supporting students ages 6-18 with their writing skills, and to helping teachers get their students excited about the literary arts."

Founded by meta-memoirist Dave Eggers. And they have a pirate shop!




First Book
"First Book is a nonprofit organization with a single mission: to give children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first new books."





Book Aid International
"Book Aid International promotes literacy in developing countries by creating reading and learning opportunities for disadvantaged people, in order to help them realise their potential and eradicate poverty."

Founded by "Hermione, Countess of Ranfurly," who you might think is an 11 year old Harry Potter fan who rules an imaginary kingdom. You'd be wrong, though.



Reading is Fundamental
"Reading is Fundamental prepares and motivates children to read by delivering free books and literacy resources to those children and families who need them most." Founded by Margaret McNamara, wife of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. I'd make a crack about RIF being some kind of black-ops front organization, except that they do such good work, and I've watched so frickin' many of their PSAs, that I really can't. I mean shouldn't.

Labels: 826 valencia, book aid, bookinist, crappuccino, dord, flowbee, gifts, j. peterman, OED, rif, scrabble, typewriters

Labels: buzzwords, japan, lampbane, tetsuko

Today the tech and book blogs are all buzzing about the Kindle, Amazon's attempt at an ereader. The tech blog reports are in-depth to the point of exhaustion, a bit hyperbolic, and overall what you'd expect. They've done this before.

Labels: amazon, ereader, kindle, lusitania

This weekend saw the arrival of Wordie Mobile, a version of the site optimized for phones and other small-screen devices. This makes it much easier to add a word to your lists if you're at the library, or on the bus, or wherever: Just point your phone browser to http://wordie.org/m. Thanks to Crystal over at Twitter for inspiring this. Other new goodies launched in the last week or two:

Labels: ads, comments, mobile, search, Tags

On the heels of yesterday's New York Times asterisk imbroglio, human asterisk Barry Bonds may be headed towards the pokey, and E*Trade may be going out of business.

Tough week for the asterisk.

Labels: asterisk, Barry Bonds, E*Trade

I have separate feed pages set up to follow media and language blogs, and was amused to see The New York Times pissing off both camps earlier this week.

The cause was a review by Kelefa Sanneh of a show by the Toronto band "Fucked Up," which the Times decided to print as "********".

Language Log, Languagehat and mediabistro were all full of sturm und drang over the asterisks, for reasons that didn't make sense to me. Language Log seems to think the Times is being inconsistent, because they once printed the word "shit" when quoting a verbal attack on Eliot Spitzer's dad. But a dispute involving public figures should be treated differently than punk music reviews. I think both punks and politicians would agree on that. Mediabistro, too, harps on "glaring inconsistencies." Languagehat calls it "absurd censorship," without giving a reason. With all due respect to Lenny Bruce, it's been a while since you were striking a blow against censorship by saying the word "fuck." While the Languagehat post is terse and unenlightening, the comments on it are far more thoughtful, and worth reading.

I love that The Gray Lady is doing such great things with digital media, and that they seem to be shedding their fear of the future. But the Times should always retain an element of old fashioned propriety, for nostalgia purposes if no other. It should always have a slight Man Men air about it, and holding itself to outdated standards of propriety is a fine way to accomplish that.

And it's hardly an impediment to good journalism. In fact, the Times writers must love this shit--a little modesty is the perfect setup for fey wordplay and a wink at the reader. Language Log's own Geoff Nunberg must have thoroughly enjoyed referring to the documentary film Fuck as "the film that dare not speak its name." Who are we to take this away from him, or the Times writers?

The only criticism that made any sense to me is that it should have been rendered F****D Up, or at least ****** **. In the interests of clarity.

Labels: censorship, fuck, Language Log, Languagehat, New York Times

The number of rock simple yet high concept all text web sites set in Palatino just doubled, with the launch of Seedy Stories. The site, built by Richard Mavis, is a sort of mini-mad-lib machine, which asks you the six basic questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how. You can enter as many answers as you'd like, and see random combinations of responses drawn from all answers.

It's intended as an idea generator, meant to spark thought through permutation, combination, and juxtaposition; a sort of constrained bibliomancy. It just launched, and doesn't have a lot of content yet; it'll be interesting to see how it feels when more people have contributed. I'd like to see some ways to interact with other users, which may be forthcoming: Richard says he'll be adding features regularly.

Labels: bibliomancy, richard mavis, seedy stories

For Wordies in the New York City area, this could be fun: a naming party for a new company. I met these good folks on the NextNY list, where Jonah helps maintain the blogroll. Go for the free food and drink, stay for the company and to show off your mad, mad word skills. I'm going to try and make it, though I'm stuck out in the hinterlands of New Jersey all afternoon tomorrow, so we'll see.

Naming companies, and web sites, can be amazingly difficult. Especially if you're trying to find an available domain at the same time. Mein got, coming up with Squirl took frickin' forever, and in the end we still made the moronic amateur-hour decision to get a .info domain (because we loved the name, but the squatter who owned .com wanted $35k for it). Wordie came more easily, perhaps because I had no intention of building it. Everything is easier when it's a joke.

Labels: amateur, names, nextNY

Dictionary Evangelist, aka Erin McKean, has posted a list of coulda-been-a-contender words that didn't make it onto the WotY shortlist, but perhaps should have. They're solid words, and they're words. The runners-up on the official OUP list included, to my mind, too many phrases, like "colony collapse disorder" and "social graph."

Erin's list: brick, hypermiler, griefer, jatropha, and unconference. Check out the post for the full poop.

There's a movement afoot to pick a Wordie WotY, curated by the Coed League of Extrawordy Gentlemen, and chosen by popular vote. More details here.

Labels: Dictionary Evangelist, Erin McKean, griefer, WOTY

The Oxford University Press, in the role of Country Music Television (or perhaps TLC), has crowned their Miss America: this year's Word of the Year is locavore. Or as mollusque would have it, proxivore.

Here's where I finally get to take a Walt Winchell (or perhaps Matt Drudge) turn: a few WotY contenders (though not the winner) made a brief appearance on Wordie last week, courtesy of... well, I won't say, but they came from on high, and were promptly removed.

That's right, lexicographic dish! Oh, I would die happy if this became the Page Six of the lexicographic world. Quixotic, maybe, but a boy can dream.

Labels: lexicography, locavore, OUP

Daniel Cassidy's "How the Irish Invented Slang" was recently the subject of a flattering (some might say fawning) story in The New York Times.

Grant Barrett, professional lexicographer and the editor of The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English, called bullshit on Cassidy in a post on his blog and here on Wordie. Our own beloved sionnach weighs in as well.

It's not exactly bareknuckles--this is Wordie, we try to be civilized--but it's edifying to hear from the pros about what constitutes proper lexicography. I'd like to hear Cassidy's response (Barrett isn't the only one to find fault), but as far as I can tell he hasn't responded to his critics, on Wordie or anywhere else.

Labels: Daniel Cassidy, Grant Barrett, lexicographers, nextNY, slang

I thought a blog about words was niche, but Errata has been trumped: Literally, A Web Log celebrates, if that's the word, a single word: literally. It's a riot, but it may cause pleurisy in the usage-sensitive. To wit, quoted in a recent post:

“IM” IN UR GRAMMER
MISUSIN UR APOSTRFE’S
LITRALY

Natural language processing--designing computer systems that understand human language-- has proven a tough nut to crack. Yesterday a TechCrunch UK post covered the beta launch of True Knowledge, a UK startup offering a natural language search engine. They join competitors like Powerset, which has yet to launch but is apparently tackling the same problem. It'll be interesting to see if these go anywhere, or become the next Ask Jeeves.

True Knowledge has a good demo video explaining their technology. The most interesting part of which is hearing a British voice pronounce the word "beta." It comes out sounding like beet-ah. Is that how it's actually pronounced over there, or is that just a quirk of the guy talking? Team Wordie, UK division, please report.

Labels: beta, natural language processing, nextNY, Powerset, True Knowledge

Finally, word lists have been broken into pages, to make it easier to go through long lists (and to prevent long lists from crashing browsers--Wordie now passes the stpeter test).

I cranked this out, so it's pretty basic, and probably buggy. Right now each page is 100 words long; eventually I'll make that configurable, and otherwise fancy it up. Let me know if you see any problems.

This coming Saturday, November 10, is the second annual Swearing Festival, which is exactly what it sounds like: an exploration and celebration of expletives.

The afternoon program is relatively staid, with a panel of linguists, authors, and publishers talking about cursing. The evening program is pretty much just cursing: competitive cursing, cursing to music, cursing in different languages.

If you're in the Bay Area (the one near San Francisco, not the Bay of Fundy or Bengal), you might want to check it out.

Ben Zimmer* has an interesting and amusing post in today's OUPblog about the Cupertino Effect: the tendency of spellcheckers, due to outdated dictionaries, bad algorithms, or a combintion thereof, to insert or suggest nonsensical words.

The recent addition of WordNet definitions to Wordie (which I'll blog at greater length on Monday) was resulting in a version of this before I tweaked the algorithm. As someone famous once said (Barbie, I think), natural language processing is hard.

* update: I incorrectly called Ben "Bill Zimmer" when this was first posted. Not sure where that came from, sorry Ben!

Labels: ben zimmer, cupertino, OUP, wordnet