I was a bit ill last weekend, so I made it easy on myself: the theme this month is ‘no theme’ 😉 It did give me the chance to dig up some of my favourite fun facts that don’t really fit into any easy category!

A typical Dutch winter scene in Delft 🙂

The Belgian prime minister's cat is popular on social media, and on The Guardian's homepage - and he speaks Dutch!

Labubu is Dutch! (not really) Flemish people speak the best non-native English in the world (yes, really), and the Dutch language has a whole lot of proverbs about teeth. All that and more in my latest newsletter :-)

Date formats always confuse my English students. So I made a helpful slide.

I thought the word "dogmatic" was a combination of "dog" and "automatic". Like a persistent and not very clever dog who is following a certain idea like an unstoppable robot. I just looked it up. It comes from the word "dogma". OMG, of course it does. 🤦‍♀️😂

In her latest newsletter, Daisy Christodoulou makes the point that educational apps can never compete with apps that have "hold the user's attention" as their sole purpose. The following excerpt made me LOL

I did a pilot study for longitudinal slang research in February (128 respondents). Got discouraged because of methodological issues (too much slang!). Have now had an idea how to address these issues. Feeling encouraged again! Also: having ChatGPT help you with R is FIRE.

The Language-Lover’s Lexipedia is now on sale in the UK. It’s pretty sweet seeing something that has consumed so much of your life sitting in Waterstones like it’s always belonged there… Thank you @bloomsburybooksuk.bsky.social. If words are your jam, it’ll make you happy. shorturl.at/5TwQI

Merriam survives on snarky posts, games, and sharper SEO. With U.S. lexicographers down from about 200 to under 50, this piece urges treating dictionaries as public goods amid fights over words like insurrection and woke. By @stefanfatsis.bsky.social in @theatlantic.com buff.ly/ycOMo0K

From around late July 2025, Urban Dictionary no longer shows an upvote/downvote count. Nobody knows why. It might just be a bug, or it may have been intentional. The missing counts make the site unusable for slang researchers like me :-(

Another nail in the coffin of internet blogging... Spam comments have existed for many years, and so have spam filters. But now spammers are using AI to read the blog post and write relevant comments, and my spam filter lets them through, meaning I have to sift through them manually.

My September newsletter is out now, with links to lots of good stuff and a couple of linguisticky pics from my trip to Guangzhou: open.substack.com/pub/lynnegui...

Stefan Fatsis on the current state of American lexicography www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

XKCD from 20 Sep 25. Is this a thing? I've never heard it, or heard anyone talk about it.

Vibe coding, with cites from @harrymccracken.com @carlyayres.com @joanwestenberg.com open.substack.com/pub/fritinan...

Cod digits? Striped equids? Dam-building rodents? Elongated yellow fruit? A new book about second mentions dives deep into those supposedly elegant variations and many others. www.theguardian.com/media/2025/s...

Happy Unicode 17.0 Day! Includes seven new emoji that are rolling out on your phones and computers in the coming year: treasure chest, trombone, avalanche, big foot, bulging face, fight cloud, orca @jenniferdaniel.bsky.social has the lowdown: jenniferdaniel.substack.com/p/tomorrows-...

Slopper: “A person who uses ChatGPT to do everything for them.” www.todayintabs.com/p/we-need-to... | via @americandialect.org listserv

I posted that Americans call lecterns podiums and it turns out there's an entire account devoted to correcting people who say podium and I'm like 1) oh dear, prescriptivism But also 2) this is utterly hilarious

After years of teaching my students about the differences between American and British English, today I learned one that was completely new to me: Americans call a 'lectern' a 'podium'! I have heard it used many times, and have simply always misunderstood it as the thing they were standing on!

According to this my book is “stellar“ and I am possibly the worlds “most devoted chronicler” of British and American English differences. I’ll take it. 😉 www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

It's my August newsletter: packed full of languagey, booky, mappy things to read, do, and think about. substack.com/home/post/p-...

That was short but sweet! If you want to hear Tony talking more about some of this new generation of 'influencer' words, have a listen to this episode of @lexispodcast.bsky.social open.spotify.com/episode/3fUW...

I'm on BBC News Now shortly talking about the 'new' words that have been added to the Cambridge Dictionary [and why we need to be careful calling them 'new']. www.theguardian.com/books/2025/a...

Word of the week: Treatler. Whether you enjoy your Little Treat™ or complain about it, someone on social media is likely to compare you to Hitler. fritinancy.substack.com/p/word-of-th...

New word watch: Doomprompting, "the act of mindlessly or addictively conversing with a chatbot." Via @grammargirl.bsky.social's terrific "AI Sidequest" newsletter. ai-sidequest.beehiiv.com/p/watch-out-...

Oneshot: In AI, the result you get from a single prompt. Borrowed from (a) gaming (b) drug use. More useful AI stuff from @grammargirl.bsky.social's "AI Sidequest" newsletter: ai-sidequest.beehiiv.com/p/how-to-use...

And here's another for P2Q3. The first half is a pretty standard rehash of the stories from last week, but it picks up a bit on the discourses as it moves on. www.independent.co.uk/life-style/s...

Gift link this time (finally found the right button!): "we can use subtitles to rate the out-loud-ness of any English word by comparing its popularity in movies to its popularity in books." - err, sure. That's a thing in corpus linguistics, right? Right? wapo.st/4oLF7Is

What are the most American and most British words? www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

It's me! Grammar Girl just released the bonus segment from my interview from earlier this year.

I’m going to be extremely old here and ask what is even meant by sticking ‘core’ to a random noun and using it as a descriptor for your book/game/thing. What even is “wizardcore”?

In the 60s, 'fantastic' used to be predominantly used in the sense of 'unbelievable; based on fantasy; not real'. 'The Fantastic 4' does not mean 'The Amazing 4', but more something like 'The Bizarre 4' or 'The Sci-Fi 4'. (And Mister Fantastic is not full of himself!)

It'll happen somewhen

I can't believe ANU is proposing to disestablish ANDC @ozworders.bsky.social‬. Over the last 20 years of writing I've often consulted staff over the origins of obscure words and phrases. We need the dictionary to record and explain our changing language. www.smh.com.au/national/fro...

"Bag of dicks", "bee's dick", "perviness", and "fudge" (int.; often as a euphemistic alternative to "fuck") are among the words and senses newly added to the OED www.oed.com/information/...

Starting a new series of interviews on the @lingcomm.bsky.social blog with people who are doing neat community collaboration linguistics projects that don't otherwise have much of a web presence Starting with Linguistics + Girl Scouts! lingcomm.org/2025/07/09/l...

For many Americans, the word "nonplussed" now means "unimpressed" or "unfazed". Example: "For all his daring down the world's steepest hills, Sasaki is remarkably laid back off the slopes and nonplussed by all the sudden interest in him."

Language friends Stan Carey and @mashedradish.bsky.social are quoted in this piece about Trump crossing a new language red line with a comment about the ceasefire that hadn't quite stuck yet. It's obviously not the most important thing but may be of interest to language lovers.

Gen Z slang of the day: "to crash out" to become suddenly, uncontrollably angry or distressed; to lose it

“Fridge cigarette” www.fastcompany.com/91351477/wha...

@byagoda.bsky.social as two commenters mention, this strikes me as UK English. To me (UK) "the drinks will be on the back" means "it is very probable that this is the case" and is not odd or new at all.

I've noticed 'unhinged' in my own lexicon and around me a lot in the last month or so, but apparently this is something that's been building for a couple of decades and only now hitting my perceptual filter.

From the vault: hear me and @superlinguo.bsky.social talk about why the word for "seal" sounds like "fuck" in so many European languages, shifts in meaning from "sucks" to "rawdogging" and more sweary commentary from the very first Lingthusiasm bonus episode, now updated and free-with-email!

I missed this two weeks ago, but the @wsj.com had an article about the (annoying, to some) use of "welcome in" as a greeting, quoting a few linguists: www.wsj.com/business/wel...

Oh look, it’s a new -washing word! | ht: @ering.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/fritinan...

Another word for déjà vu (French for "already seen") is promnesia ("memory of the future"), an etymological foil of "amnesia."

It's possible that Grammarly has lost it's damn freaking mind. #writing #writingcommunity #booksky

I have added some more charts to the 'tons/heaps/loads of' blog post, with singulars, 'tonnes', and 'sh**loads' separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2025/05/tons...