Early 20th-century humorist Gelett Burgess is credited with coining the word blurb for “a bit of promotional language,” such as recommendations on a book jacket. To create a buzz for his 1906 book Are You A Bromide?, Burgess devised advertising copy featuring a shouting woman named Miss Belinda Blurb next to text effusively praising the book, which jokingly divided people into two categories: Bromides, given to boring and sedate pronouncements, and Sulphites, who are peppy and energetic. This helped popularize the use of bromide, which came to mean more generally “platitude” or “cliché.” Burgess also wrote the poem “The Purple Cow.”This is part of a complete episode.
The so-called “lifestyle influencer accent” you hear in videos on TikTok and YouTube, where someone speaks with rising tones at the end of sentences and phrases, suggesting that they’re about to say something important, is a form of what linguists...
Meg in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, gets why the state highway department encourages drivers to use their blinkers when changing lanes, but placing a digital sign at the Sagamore Bridge that reads Use Ya Blinkah is, well, a lexical bridge too far. Meg’s...
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