Whelm

Recently I found the word "whelm" used in a book and thought it was unusual, so I looked it up

What I found was shocking! 

(Okay, shocking for a word nerd.) 

How is that when you're underwhelmed, you're not underneath by feeling engulfed, submerged or buried; and when you're overwhelmed it is more likely evoking that experience of being under the thing? 

Blewin'

This flier for an Aboriginal mediation service caught my eye

It seems appropriate to discuss it on Australia Day as the expression of "having a blue" is slang for having a fight.

I guess the decision to write it as "blewin'" avoided misunderstanding if it were "bluein'" or "bluin'" but it did make me think the mediators might be blow-ins, an expression for people who have only recently arrived.

So, "having a blue" seems to have originated in the late Nineteenth Century, possibly gaining popularity based on an observation that Irish were often fighting.

Redheaded people were referred to as "blue" as an ironic joke, which might've started in the mid-Nineteenth Century with migration as part of the Gold Rush.

Given the unions in Australia started around that time and the Eureka flag has a blue background, I wonder if that might've also played a role.

Anyway, there seems to be a semiosis in the flier that draws on multiple layers of meaning across successive waves of migration.

The slang is a substitute for the word "mediation" which originates in Latin during the Fourteenth Century.

Yet the flier is aimed at a group with a much older claim to this land.

And it was printed in 2009, so likely out of date!

Untiring zeal

Have zealots given zeal a bad name?

I don't know the background to this plaque sitting in my office, but it's given me an appreciation for how the word zeal might have a different connotation now than whenever Ms Campbell was writing for the ages.

How to Avoid Mixing Your Metaphors

Complimentary wi-fi

Pivotelli

I'm a slut for wordplay, which is why I find the name on this television bracket amusing.

Unwritten laws of English

Bolster is a funny word

Last month I posted about a typo on the website of a regional newspaper.

It was one of my occasional postings about errors but I observed recently that the same site again used a variation of the word 'bolster'. It seems they use it frequently, which reminds me of the line about how every journalist needs new cliches.

Bolster does seem like a good word for headlines though as it's short and is easily recognised as a metaphor or perhaps sometimes as an analogy.

Anyway, the use of the word 'bolster' here prompted me to look for a definition.

And when I looked at idea that bolsters might be pillows, I couldn't help but imagine them literally.

If you try thinking about "out-of-towners" as pillows you get this image of grey nomads in a pile with a bunch of Waggans eating and drinking on top of them.

Try it for yourself!

Swingeing back from the dead

Flicking through the Sydney Morning Herald today I was sure I'd spotted another example of the decline in sub-editing to publish here under the 'war on error' tag but in turns out that swingeing really is a word.

And, more interestingly for word nerds like me, it's an archaic word that appears to be coming back into contemporary use. In fact The Economist predicted "swingeing will appear in at least one news headline a week for the rest of the year" more than a year ago but that probably shows how behind Australia is in the latest trends or maybe even how little I read.

For a while now I've thought we are living in an age of declining literacy, even going so far as to write that literacy is dead. It's more appropriate to acknowledge that the nature of literacy is changing to reflect the digital age.

So now I propose we celebrate the continued employment of verbose sub-editors, the longevity of literacy and the opportunity to learn a new word!