Clipmarks | Aribeth's English collection

LEXOPHILES (LOVERS OF WORDS):

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:37:06 GMT

clipped by: thefoxalmighty
clipper's remarks: these are real great

Clip Source: www.tunnelblick.ch

A bicycle can’t stand alone; it is two tired.

A will is a dead giveaway.

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

In a democracy it’s your vote that counts; in feudalism, it’s your Count that votes.

If you don’t pay your exorcist you can get repossessed.

Acupuncture: a jab well done.

Santa’s helpers are subordinate clauses.

Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead to know basis.

When she saw her first strands of gray hair, she thought she’d dye.

If you jump off a Paris bridge, you are in Seine.

The short fortuneteller who escaped from prison: a small medium at large.

He had a photographic memory which was never developed.

A calendar’s days are numbered.

Local Area Network in Australia : The LAN down under.

You are stuck with your debt if you can’t budge it.

When a clock is hungry it goes back four seconds.

Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I’ll show you A-flat miner.

With her marriage she got a new name and a dress.

Tags: language

Heavens to Murgatroyd

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:03:39 GMT

clipped by: sahara

Clip Source: www.phrases.org.uk

Phrases, sayings and idioms at

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Meanings and origins of phrases and sayings

Phrases Thesaurus

Heavens to Murgatroyd

Meaning

An exclamation of surprise.

Origin

'Heavens to Murgatroyd' is American in origin and dates from the mid 20th century. The expression was popularized by the cartoon character Snagglepuss - a regular on the Yogi Bear Show in the 1960s, and is a variant of the earlier 'heavens to Betsy'.

The first use of the phrase wasn't by Snagglepuss but comes from the 1944 film Meet the People. It was spoken by Bert Lahr, best remembered for his role as the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. Snagglepuss's voice was patterned on Lahr's, along with the 'heavens to Murgatroyd' line. Daws Butler's vocal portrayal of the character was so accurate that when the cartoon was used to promote Kellogg Cereals, Lahr sued and made the company distance him from the campaign by giving a prominent credit to Butler.

Tags: language, origins

The Mystery of English

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 23:52:46 GMT

clipped by: dakotayii
clipper's remarks: A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night. We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary. In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4 of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.
If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used. It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP. When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP. When it rains, it wets UP the earth.

When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP, for now my time is UP, so ....

Time to shut UP!

Oh ...one more thing:!

What is the first thing you do in the morning and the last thing you do at night?

U P!

Clip Source: www.thecommunitypaper.com

The Mysteries of English

Lovers of the English language might enjoy this. How do non-natives ever learn all the nuances of English?

There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and that word is 'UP.'

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list, but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP? Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends and we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver, we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen. We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning. People stirup trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing but to be dressed UP is special. And this up is confusing:

Tags: humor

Beware of Buffalo buffalo, buffalo, for they may buffalo you

Sun, 23 Mar 2008 05:04:21 GMT

clipped by: Deepti

Clip Source: www.mentalfloss.com

Believe it or not, this sentence is grammatically correct and has meaning: “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” First devised by professor William J. Rapaport in 1972, the sentence uses various meanings and parts of speech for the term “buffalo” (and its related proper noun “Buffalo”) to make an extremely hard-to-parse sentence

Although most people know “buffalo” as both a singular and plural term for bison, and “Buffalo” as a city in New York, “buffalo” is also a verb meaning “to bully, confuse, deceive, or intimidate

Still too hard to follow for those of us who don’t know “buffalo” as a verb

[Those] buffalo(es) from Buffalo [that are intimidated by] buffalo(es) from Buffalo intimidate buffalo(es) from Buffalo

once more

Bison from Buffalo, New York who are intimidated by other bison in their community also happen to intimidate other bison in their community

Tags: language, buffalo, english, sentence, strange

For The Love Of Words...

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:25:49 GMT

clipped by: carrerinyes

Clip Source: www.writinghood.com

For the Love of Words: Seven Wonderful Websites Where Words Matter

Words are beautiful, and these seven wonderful word websites illustrate the reason why they are.

For passionate writers around the world, choosing the right words to communicate are more than just clever wordplay, it's an obsession. Wordsmiths who routinely exercise their extraordinary vocabulary are continually positioned to learn new words, thus making them outstanding communicators.

Word Spy

Devoted to lexpionage, “The sleuthing of new words and phrases”.

Write Express

Confusing Words

The English language is one of the most difficult languages to learn in the world and here at Confusing Words the reason why is apparent. Confusing Words is a collection of 3210 words that sound alike, but are spelled and used differently. A great website for both readers and writers to learn the difference and stop being a confused word victim.

Virtual Salt

100 Words

101 Words

Wordie

Can Poor Writing Skills Overshadow Good Content?

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 19:46:32 GMT

clipped by: sweetsfoods

Clip Source: www.problogger.net

Can Poor Writing Skills Overshadow Good Content?

Considering that I am not a native English speaker, I wish that the answer to this question was “no.” Unfortunately the opposite seems to be true; poor writing skills do can affect your otherwise witty and useful content.

Grammatical mistakes, misspelled words, incorrect punctuation and poorly structured sentences can make your content confusing, if not utterly unreadable. If you then consider the fact that we have hundreds of blogs on every niche these days, you can see that the writing quality could be the difference between a loyal and a lost reader.

How does one improve his writing skills, though? Below you will find 3 points that can help you with this task.

1. Avoid the common mistakes

Five Grammatical Errors That Make You Look Dumb

Six Common Punctuation Errors that Bedevil Bloggers

Do You Make These Mistakes When You Write?

2. Proofread

3. Expand your vocabulary and master the grammar basics

Tags: writing, grammar, blogging

Online Chat With Professor Seth Lerer

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 00:12:42 GMT

clipped by: carrerinyes
clipper's remarks: The full transcript is available at the source along with upcoming chat details. Anu Garg is the Author of the popular "A Word A Day" calender books.

Clip Source: wordsmith.org

A Chat With Seth Lerer

Today, we have as our guest Seth Lerer, a professor at Stanford University and the author of "Inventing English: A Portable History of the Language". He is joining us from California.

Anu Garg
The topic of today's chat is The Journey of the English Language.

Tom Doyle - DC
I very much enjoyed your Teaching Company lectures. Could you clarify something that you mentioned in them? You cited the Cornish accent that became “pirate talk” (due to the movie portrayal of Long John Silver) as an example of a form of English that had not completed the Great Vowel Shift. Some folks (without much authority) challenge this online -- have you or others written anything more detailed on this that I could point them to? And do you have anything further to say about it here?

Seth Lerer
Tom: not Cornish, but East Anglia, late 17th century English.

Jim Bisso - Sonoma
What do you think has been the biggest change in the English language in the last 100 years?

The arrows affected the aardvark. The effect was eye-popping.

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:03:22 GMT

clipped by: Pooge
clipper's remarks: I have to look this up each time I use effect or affect, but now that I've found this helpful mnemonic maybe I'll remember. We'll see.

Clip Source: grammar.quickanddirtytips.com

Today's topic is when to use affect with an a and when to use effect with an e.

So, for our purposes, affect with an a is a verb and effect with an e is a noun; and now we can get to the mnemonics. First, the mnemonic involves a very easy noun to help you remember: aardvark.

"But why aardvark?" you ask. Because there's an example to help you remember as well. It's, "The arrows affected the aardvark. The effect was eye-popping." It should be easy to remember that affect with an a goes with the a words arrow and aardvark, and that effect with an e goes with the e word eye-popping. If you can visualize the sentences, "The arrows affected the aardvark. The effect was eye-popping," it's pretty easy to see that affect with an a is a verb and effect with an e is a noun.

Rare Uses of Affect and Effect

Affect can be used as a noun when you are talking about psychology.

Effect can be used as a verb that essentially means "to bring about," or "to accomplish."

Tags: effect, affact, grammar, language, english

Top 10 Rules of Punctuation

Sun, 25 Nov 2007 14:43:23 GMT

clipped by: CrazyRedHead
clipper's remarks: I; HATE! it when people: misuse simple, punctuations?!?!?!

Clip Source: listverse.com

10. Comma

Use commas to separate independent clauses in a sentence

The Oxford Comma

I love apples, pears, and oranges.

9. Period

There are stylistic differences here.

8. Question Mark

One thing to be careful of is to not include a question mark when it is not needed:

WRONG: I wonder how many people will come to the party?

7. Exclamation Mark

Two or three exclamation marks in a row is completely unnecessary.

6. Quote Marks

Punctuation with quotations

5. Colon

A colon should be used after a complete statement in order to introduce one or more directly related ideas

4. Semicolon

Use a semicolon to join related independent clauses in compound sentences.

3. Apostrophe

The apostrophe has three uses:

1) to form possessives of nouns
2) to show the omission of letters
3) to indicate certain plurals of lowercase letters.

2. Parentheses

Parentheses are occasionally and sparingly used

1. Dash

Hyphen

Use a hyphen with the prefixes

You should also use a hyphen to avoid confusion in a sentence:

He had to re-sign the contract

Tags: punctuation, grammar, english, language, writing

slacktivism

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 18:42:43 GMT

clipped by: DazuPrime

Clip Source: www.snopes.com

E-petitions are the latest manifestation of slacktivism, the search for the ultimate feel-good that derives from having come to society's rescue without having had to actually gets one's hands dirty or open one's wallet. It's slacktivism that prompts us to forward appeals for business cards on behalf of a dying child intent upon having his name recorded in the Guinness World Book of Records or exhortations to others to continue circulating a particular e-mail because some big company has supposedly promised that every forward will generate monies for the care of a particular dying child. Likewise, it's slacktivism that prompts us to want a join a boycott of designated gas companies or eschew buying gasoline on a particular day rather than reduce our personal consumption of fossil fuels by driving less and taking the bus more often. Slacktivism comes in many forms (and there are many other illustrations of it on this web site; our goal was merely to offer a few examples rather than provide a definitive list), but its key defining characteristic is its central theme of doing good with little or no effort on the part of person inspired to participate in the forwarding, exhorting, collecting, or e-signing.

Tags: the search for the ultimate feel-good that derives