An interesting corrective to the fantastical tales of Countess Báthory is the newly published biography by Shelley Puhak

I think it’s #thicktrunktuesday…

New role! 📢 We're looking for a dynamic and experienced Science Manager to join us at BTO. Apply now ➡️ www.bto.org/jobs #Ornithology 📆 Full time, Permanent. 📝 £46,344 per annum. 📍 Hybrid working. Deadline for applications: Monday 9 March.

True to his word, PM Pedro Sánchez' Spain will formally start investigating X, Meta, & TikTok for crimes related to child pornography. Watch their owners begin a crusade or personal attacks & deliberate misinformation about Sánchez & his country. Whatever you may read, fact-check it.

The University of Essex plans to close their Southend campus and cut up to 400 jobs — around one in five staff! But the staff and students are fighting back. Sign their petition to stop the cuts, save Southend, and protect education www.megaphone.org.uk/petitions/sa...

This week on the blog - the history of the word fiat - from medieval decrees and kings, to currency and cars. Read all about it at wordfoolery.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/t... #etymology #WordsRomansGaveUs #Latin

Just over a month to go until the deadline!!! A reminder, we're inviting submissions for Lavender Languages 32 to be held at the University of Edinburgh, 2-4 September (@schoolofppls.bsky.social) Submit here: lavlang32.ppls.ed.ac.uk

Do I know any fabulous linguists here who would like to have a convo with me about the use of Spanish in Bad Bunny’s halftime show? Asking for a future podcast episode 😀

Luis Buñuel was a proto-Ai filmmaker. When he cast two different actresses for the same role in That Obscure Object of Desire, switching between them with no rhyme or reason, he was a pioneer in the use of character inconsistency.

My book about Britain ends with a memory. Of the first time I ever worked at Broadcasting House as a guest commentator, what that meant to me, and what the BBC means for 🇬🇧’s place in the world. The idea that the World Service could end is awful, and frankly embarrassing for the British Government.

May I wish you all a very good evening…

Polish mother Ewa Buczek decided to tell her 9-year-old son, Janek, about what people in Ukraine are going through right now. After learning about shelling and cold homes left without electricity, the boy handed over 50 zlotys to help Ukrainians and said that if needed, he could give another 50💔

'Maturation'

Our incredible students have written a letter of support to the VC and are asking students to co-sign their petition - a few extracts from their Instagram post here, and links below! ✊

Everything is back to normal…

I have been charting the linguistic and cultural framing of emerging tech from Dolly the Sheep onwards. This week's post is about Moltbook, a social networking platform for AI agents which was a bit of a viral sensation makingsciencepublic.com/2026/02/13/m... #AI #metaphor #AIMetaphorObservatory

It’s the fourteenth of February…

Job alert for translators! @wasafirimag.bsky.social is seeking a UK-based Translator in Residence working with/in Endangered Languages. Applications are due February 15 - learn more at:

Literally crazy. If the Linguistics department at @essexuni.bsky.social is at risk, then our entire field is at risk. This is incredibly short-sighted given that linguistics (with anti-immigration discourses, AI, and linguistic discrimination on the rise) is arguably needed more than ever.

Plan 2 student loan interest is unfair, says Lucy Powell Deputy Labour leader says her son is in ‘egregious’ scheme under which many graduates face repayments that allow the debt to grow www.thetimes.com/money/family...

In this week's post I finally catch up with #Moltbook in my quest to hunt for #AI #metaphors and cultural framing makingsciencepublic.com/2026/02/13/m...

This is shocking. Cost of living crisis laid bare as almost half of Britons ‘have under £25 left at end of week’ Majority of UK adults forced to make difficult choices, with almost two-thirds found to be cutting back on essentials like food and heating www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

‘Passionate’

Update from suburbia…

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

Our latest update to the very well-received @engmediacentre.bsky.social New Directions pack is now available! Written by Amanda Cole of University of Cambridge & me, it features 5 new summaries and Q&As, along with an updated glossary. Download it here: www.englishandmedia.co.uk/publications...

A reminder of one of the loveliest pairs of siblings in the dictionary: ‘muscle’ and ‘mouse’. To the Roman imagination, the flexed biceps of a (typically naked) athlete resembled a rodent scuttling under the skin. ‘Musculus’, in Latin, means ‘little mouse’.

Includes a chapter by the @mantrap.bsky.social team on using #corpus linguistics to address the effects of manosphere language

Dusk…

The post on "platty joobs" slang cites (and may be of interest to) @darach.bsky.social, @maddysherratt.bsky.social, @tonythorne007.bsky.social, @christianilbury.bsky.social, @anghyflawn.net, @mscaitlinmoran.bsky.social, @gretchenmcculloch.com, @drwhen.bsky.social, and others.

Been saying the EU target should be "2 languages (English plus)" forever. Spaniards sometimes say they can't make room to teach Catalan or Galician or Basque to Castilian-speakers because their English is so poor. Wrong! Good language learning culture benefits all.

This of course could have been resolved ages ago if Starmer had bothered to appoint a Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport

Did one! Not listed and should be? Let me know 🙂 go.bsky.app/AT6KX6X

Fake and AI generated 'experts' are being quoted in articles in the UK press. "Out of a sample of 250 expert-quoting articles published in The Sun, Daily Express, Mirror, Daily Mail and Daily Star in 2025 and late 2024, 28 experts do not exist". pressgazette.co.uk/news/faces-o...

The verb ‘to worry’ has surprising family members. Within Germanic, it’s related to German ‘würgen’ and Dutch ‘wurgen’, which mean “to strangle”. A little further down the family line, they’re related to Latin ‘urgēre’ (to press), which gave English ‘urgent’. Click my new graphic to learn more:

📣Calling teachers of #French in all education sectors in Scotland! Sign up for the online launch of our Teachers of French in Scotland association, aka TOFIS on 23 Feb at 4.15: https://loom.ly/q3sz-VA#French PS - you'll want to save the date for our next Future of French en Écosse forum too!

🔐 My paper "Semantics and pragmatics in Construction Grammar” is now Open Access! It challenges the blurred lines between semantics and pragmatics in CxG, advocating for clearer distinctions to enhance our understanding of linguistic constructions. 🔗 Read it here: doi.org/10.1075/bjl....

Word of the Day (it was used of Farage's latest promotion of weaponised nostalgia yesterday): 'boomerslop'...https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-ai-vibes-app-videos-trump-slop-boomer-2025-11

Jobs: General Linguistics, Phonetics: Lecturer in Linguistics (Teaching & Scholarship), Queen Mary University of London

Advanced notice 👇 The 18th Biennial Conference of the International Association for Forensic and Legal Linguistics (IAFLL 2027) will be held in Porto, Portugal, 12-16 July 2027 hosted by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Porto. #ForensicLinguistics

Feb emagazine is now online and the print issue will be in schools in the next couple of weeks. It's chocabloc with great pieces. In this thread I'll give a taster of some of them. If you've not yet subscribed or re-subscribed, it's not too late! 🧵 1/ englishandmedia.co.uk/emc-magazines/

Much maligned - and wrongly so...https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/feb/09/gordon-brown-by-james-macintyre-review-a-very-different-kind-of-politician?CMP=share_btn_url

Here's the abstract for my talk in two weeks at Columbia U's linguistics department on profanity and what it's good for. It will be, as always, very fun.

Chi ha scritto questo titolo non conosce il significato della parola BANDO in italiano. Presumo sia una traduzione dell'inglese BAN, ma sono #falsiamici. Dettagli: www.terminologiaetc.it/2017/06/27/f...

My WORD OF THE WEEK for the coming week is ‘weary’ (not bc I’m exhausted, haha 🤭 but bc it popped up in Richardson’s PAMELA which we’re reading with the second years & it made me think of its etymology in Old English, ‘werig’ and Grendel limping back to the mere ‘werigmod’, weary in spirit).

Apart from everything else I think the word ‘loser’ is only ever used by the very worst people in the English-speaking world (it is borrowed by French and German speakers too, sometimes ironically, sometimes not)

the miniature therapy horses that do hospital visits have little sneakers that they wear inside so they don't scuff up the floors