Waddle<\/p>\n
The word waddle is often used of ducks, referring to the characteristic way they move, using short steps and moving from one side to the other. From a linguistic point of view, it is interesting because it contains \u2013le<\/em>, a frequentive<\/em>, i.e. a morpheme which indicates that something happens frequently, also contained in wriggle, paddle, hobble, sparkle, dazzle and others. (Quinion 2009: 342-3)<\/p>\n Waited Well, the milkman has come Whales When are you going home? Wholly Wikipedia<\/p>\n In the early days of the personal computer, programming languages tended to be rather complicated things to learn and moreover, slow to use. In 1994, a certain Ward Cullingham developed a system which made the use of related webpages much easier and, above all, much quicker. Because it was so quick, he called it wikiwikiweb<\/em>, wiki <\/em>being the Hawaiian word for ‘quick’. The reduplication was used to say that it was very quick indeed. Soon, however, people thought that wikiwiki<\/em> was a bit cumbersome and shortened it to simply wiki<\/em>. That was the state of affairs when Larry Sanger came across the word in 2001. He decided to create a collaborative, web-based encyclopaedia which would use the wiki system. He took the words wiki <\/em>and encyclopaedia <\/em>and formed the word wikipedia<\/em>. The word encyclopaedia <\/em>comes from classical Athens, where children <\/em>were taken through the whole cycle <\/em>of learning. Their knowledge was supposed to be en-cyclo-paedic.<\/em> The Romans were so impressed that they started writing books which contained articles on everything that there was, encyclopaedias<\/em>. The paedia <\/em>part of encyclopaedia<\/em>, the one that refers to children,\u00a0is preserved in wikipedia, <\/em>which literally means ‘fastchild’. Not a piece of knowledge shared by many of the millions of users of Wikipedia. (Forsyth 2016: 2016-217)<\/p>\n With a pinch of salt Woman<\/p>\n The word woman <\/em>does not, as modern folk-etymologies have it, derive from womb-man<\/em>. It derives from wif-man. <\/em>(A relict of this can be seen in the modern pronunciation of women<\/em>) The modern form has given rise to the suspicion that woman <\/em>is “only” the marked form of man <\/em>and, as such, a form of despreciation of women. Originally, however, man <\/em>did not mean ‘male’ but ‘human’. And the original form of man <\/em>was actually w\u00e6p-man<\/em>, ‘armed human’. As in this example, the apparent derivational relations of words can turn out to be historically inaccurate. (Rundblad & Kronenfeld 1998: 26)<\/p>\n Word Worm<\/strong><\/p>\n “Therewith began a fearful battle between worm and man” wrote William Morris in the nineteenth century. A sentence that does not make much sense to modern ears – unless one realises that worm here is used in its old sense of ‘dragon’. (Forsyth 2016: 175)<\/p>\n Wot \u2018 e wuz giv’n Wow!<\/p>\n Wow!<\/i><\/span>, a modern word expressing surprise, admiration, has found its way into other languages besides English in recent years. Modern it appears to us, but it is not that at all. As a matter of fact, it is quite old. Thomas Dermondy, one of the Scottish \u201eGraveyard Poets\u201c, uses it in one of his poems at the end of the 18<\/span>th <\/span><\/sup>century. But i<\/span>t<\/span> is older still. Its first documented occurrence is in a translation of Virgil\u2018s <\/span>Aeneid, <\/i><\/span>of<\/span> 1513! Its author was <\/span>Gavin Douglas, another Scottish writer. <\/span>One can say that <\/span>Wow!<\/i><\/span> is uniquely and originally Scottish. So much so that, as Janer Sorenson has argued, it subverted \u201eeighteenth-century British linguistic propriety\u201c and was consequently excluded from Johnson\u2019s <\/span>Dictionary of the English Language<\/i><\/span>)! (Griffin 2013: 134). <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Writer Wug Waddle The word waddle is often used of ducks, referring to the characteristic way they move, using short steps and moving from one side to the other. From a linguistic point of view, it is interesting because it contains \u2013le, … Continue reading
\nMost English speakers pronounce the suffix \/I d\/ , whereas most Americans say \/\u201a d\/. Other examples are wanted or started.<\/p>\n
\nImagine the following exchange: A: \u2018Can you tell me the time?’ \u2013 B: \u2018Well, the milkman has come.’ What will A make of B’s answer? He might, of course, just discard it as rubbish, as irrelevant to his question. But probably he wouldn’t. Probably he would assume that the answer is relevant to his question. Then his train of thought might be like this: \u2018B cannot give a full answer to my question, but he may assume that the milkman’s coming provides a partial answer to my question. He assumes that I know at what time the milkman usually comes, and indicates in this way that it must at least be later than that’. The fact that communication works like this shows that people, even if they do not seem to be cooperating they do so at a deeper level. (cf. Gramley\/P\u00e4tzold 1992: 213)<\/p>\n
\nIn class, when discussing a graffiti which included the words \u201cFree Wales!\u201d, a student started making comments which did not seem to make much sense until it turned out that she was talking about whales, not Wales. Although the words are spelt differently, they are, of course, now pronounced the same \u2013 but not by all speakers of English. Speakers of non-standard form of English and also some speakers of Standard English still make a distinction, pronouncing whales with an initial \/h\/, and this distinction is still reflected in the spelling. Originally, the spelling was often , and this reflects the pronunciation more closely, but this form was gradually replaced by (cf. Crystal 2005: 141).<\/p>\n
\nYou would normally ask this question with a falling intonation, but a low rise at the end is not unusual. That can make quite a difference. It permits you to sound more friendly, less absolute. A rise leaves more room for the addressee to answer freely, even, for example, by remarking that he is not planning to go home right now. (Gramley\/P\u00e4tzold 1992: 112-3)<\/p>\n
\nDoes wholly sound different form holy? It probably does. It sounds a bit as if the \/l\/ was longer. In reality, is rather occurs twice, marking the end of whole and the beginning of – ly, although the two sounds merge into each other. (Davis 2004: 79)<\/p>\n
\nIt is often believed that this comes from classical Latin, but there does not seem to be any evidence of this. It is more likely a piece of medieval Latin. The meaning is clear: just as a sprinkling of salt makes one’s meal more enjoyable, so a doubtful story goes down easier cum grano salis – with a pinch of salt. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2000: 163-4)<\/p>\n
\nThe word word is clearly ambiguous. If you are asked how many words there are in a particular dictionary we take the word word in one sense, if asked to write a 2000-word-essay on a particular topic we take the word in another sense. (Lyons 1981: 101)<\/p>\n
\nThis is a classical example of what is often referred to as eye-dialect. It may be found in novels or other literary works and is a specific character’s way of saying \u2018What he was given’. Clearly, it is meant to represent a non-standard speaker of English, but, as a matter of fact, it doesn’t! This is the way everyone speaks. It could be taken as the normal representation of this sentence spoken by a speaker of Standard English. Nevertheless, when we see it in a novel, we do not take it like that, but understand it as the words of a non-standard speaker, although we don’t know what is non-standard about it (cf. Crystal 2005: 486).<\/p>\n
\nWhen British speakers say writer, the is pronounced as \/t\/. Not so when American speakers say writer. They realise when it comes between vowels with a flap of the tongue tip against the alveolar ridge. This sound is often perceived as \/d\/, but it isn’t, it is rather like the flapped \/r\/ of RP very. Anyway, as intervocalic is also tapped, and between vowels cannot be distinguished, and so hurting sounds like herding, helter sound like held’er, totem sounds like towed’em, futile sounds like feudal, and writer sounds like rider. To make things more complicated, this does not apply when the following syllable is stressed. That is why you get atom with a flap but atomic with \/t\/. (Gramley\/P\u00e4tzold 1992: 339).<\/p>\n
\nA completely fictitious word, which was used in an experiment with children made in the 1950s. The children were asked questions which made them use the plural of the word, which, of course, they had never heard before. The children produced wugs, i.e. \/ w \u00c3 g z \/ (Matthews 2003: 80). They thus showed that they \u2018had learnt the rule’ of regular plural formation in English.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"