For a deep dive into the world of emoji, check out Keith Houston’s new book, Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of the Emoji (Bookshop|Amazon). Emoji offer what’s called paralinguistic restitution, that is, restoring to written language elements that are otherwise lacking. Among younger users, the skull emoji suggests laughter, inferring the slang expression I’m dead, meaning “I’m laughing myself to death. Similarly, the blue trucker’s cap emoji can accuse someone of lying, because it can indicate the slang term cap meaning “lie.” Houston is also the author of a wonderful book on the history of punctuation called Shady Characters (Bookshop|Amazon), which tells the story of the @ sign. This is part of a complete episode.
An 1875 dictionary of the Sussex dialect from southeastern England gives a colorful glimpse of life there in those days. A beever is “an 11 o’clock luncheon.” In parts of Sussex, a ladybug is variously known as a Bishop Barnaby, a fly-golding, or...
A Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, listener says when he was growing up, his family used the word schmutz as a verb. For example, when one parent reminded the other to apply sunscreen to the youngsters, they might say Make sure you schmutz the kids...
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