Most euphemistic, indeed

The American Dialect Society votes today on its 2006 Words of the Year, in a variety of categories. This nominee stands out:

MOST EUPHEMISTIC
[...]
waterboarding: an interrogation technique in which the subject is immobilized and doused with water to simulate drowning; reported to be used by U.S. interrogators against terrorism detainees.

So, "waterboarding" is a euphemism.

"Interrogation technique"?

"U.S. interrogators"?

"Detainees"?!

Is this intentional irony, Alanis?

And don't even get me started about how NPR plays along with the administration's Newspeak.

New linguistic peeve

The use of "so" to end a sentence, as if it were punctuation.

Miscellany and week in review

I don't care what the media says; "myriad" is not a noun.

So, by now, anybody who's reading will have noted that I'm a bit long-winded and I seem to take just about everything incredibly seriously. That isn't strictly true; I do possess a well-concealed sense of humor IRL. It's just that so far, I haven't felt like there was any point to putting up a blog of (intentionally) stupid stuff.

This is sort of the venue for me to work out the demons of all the theses and dissertations that I never wrote and never will. There are undoubtedly lots of people out there researching and writing about these issues in greater detail and far higher quality. If you find any, feel free to steer them here to educate me, or me there to educate myself.

And if you're not enjoying the blog so far, well, it's unlikely to change much. This is what bsktcase is kind of about.