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Steve, Myself, And i-: The Big Story Of A Little Prefix

Steve Jobs did his last product launch last March, for the iPad 2. At the close, he stood in front of a huge picture of a sign showing the intersection of streets called Technology and Liberal Arts.It...

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'Occupy:' Geoff Nunberg's 2011 Word Of The Year

Geoff Nunberg, the linguist contributor on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, is the author of the book The Years of Talking Dangerously.If the word of the year is supposed to be an item that has...

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Slut: The Other Four Letter S-Word

Geoff Nunberg, the linguist contributor on NPR's Fresh Air with Terry Gross, is the author of the book The Years of Talking Dangerously."My choice of words was not the best," Rush Limbaugh said in his...

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The Word 'Hopefully' Is Here To Stay, Hopefully

Geoff Nunberg, the linguist contributor on NPR's Fresh Air, is the author of the book The Years of Talking Dangerously.There was something anticlimactic to the news that the AP Stylebook will no longer...

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Taboo Revival: Talking Private Parts In Public Places

Geoff Nunberg is the linguist contributor on NPR's Fresh Air. His new book, Ascent of the A-Word, will be appearing this summer. It was one of those moments when anatomical correctness and cultural...

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Swearing: A Long And #%@&$ History

Sometimes it's small government you need to keep your eye on. Take Middleborough, Mass., whose town meeting recently imposed a $20 fine for swearing in public. According to the police chief, the...

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With Ryan's Ascent, A Few Thoughts On 'Entitlement'

People are saying that Mitt Romney's selection of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate creates an opportunity to hold what Ryan likes to call an "adult conversation" about entitlement spending....

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When Words Were Worth Fighting Over

I have a quibble with the title of David Skinner's new book, The Story of Ain't. In fact, that pariah contraction plays only a supporting role in the story. The book is really an account of one of the...

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One Debate, Two Very Different Conversations

When you consider how carefully staged and planned the debates are and how long they've been around, it's remarkable how often candidates manage to screw them up. Sometimes they're undone by a simple...

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Even Americans Find Some Britishisms 'Spot On'

Mitt Romney was on CNN not long ago defending the claims in his campaign ads — "We've been absolutely spot on," he said. Politics aside, the expression had me doing an audible roll of my eyes. I've...

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Geoff Nunberg's Word Of The Year: Big Data

"Big Data" hasn't made any of the words-of-the-year lists I've seen so far. That's probably because it didn't get the wide public exposure given to items like "frankenstorm,""fiscal cliff" and YOLO.

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'The Whole Nine Yards' Of What?

Where does the phrase "the whole nine yards" come from? In 1982, William Safire called that "one of the great etymological mysteries of our time."He thought the phrase originally referred to the...

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Historical Vocab: When We Get It Wrong, Does It Matter?

Has there ever been an age that was so grudging about suspending its disbelief? The groundlings at the Globe Theatre didn't giggle when Shakespeare had a clock chime in Julius Caesar. The Victorians...

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Even Dictionaries Grapple With Getting 'Marriage' Right

It's a funny thing about dictionaries. First we're taught to revere them, then we have to learn to set them aside. Nobody ever went wrong starting a middle-school composition with, "According to...

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'Horrific' And 'Surreal': The Words We Use To Bear Witness

Mass shootings, bus crashes, tornadoes, terrorist attacks — we've gotten adept at talking about these things. Act of God or act of man, they're all horrific. At least that was the word you kept hearing...

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Calling It 'Metadata' Doesn't Make Surveillance Less Intrusive

"This is just metadata. There is no content involved." That was how Sen. Dianne Feinstein defended the NSA's blanket surveillance of Americans' phone records and Internet activity. Before those...

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Bracing For Google Glass: An In-Your-Face Technology

The likes of you and I can't buy Google Glass yet. It's available only to the select developers and opinion-makers who have been permitted to spring $1,500 for the privilege of having the first one on...

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The Internet's 'Twerk' Effect Makes Dictionaries Less Complete

Evidently it was quite fortuitous. Just a couple of days after MTV's Video Music Awards, Oxford Dictionaries Online released its quarterly list of the new words it was adding. To the delight of the...

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Was Rand Paul's Plagiarism Dishonest Or A Breach Of Good Form?

Even taken together, the charges didn't seem to amount to that big a deal — just a matter of quoting a few factual statements and a Wikipedia passage without attributing them. But as Rand Paul...

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Narcissistic Or Not, 'Selfie' Is Nunberg's Word Of The Year

I feel a little defensive about choosing "selfie" as my Word of the Year for 2013. I've usually been partial to words that encapsulate one of the year's major stories, such as "occupy" or "big data."...

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