"I adore you, Mother Mary / but could you turn me back to a witch?"

[larryhammer]

Datamining the Google Books corpus for linguistic and sociohistorical purposes (via):

Between 1800 and 2000 six verbs migrated from irregular to regular (burn, chide, smell, spell, spill and thrive) but two others went the opposite way (light and wake). In the case of sneaked vs. snuck, it's too soon to tell.

An object lesson in why you need to be able to improvise a poem on demand.

Important question for the ages: How many sugar gliders can fit inside a Cool Whip container? (via)

---L.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Sneak/snuck, and lie/lay.

I suspect with the significant drop in grammar teaching during the seventies and eighties, and the resultant evidence of constant grammatical oopsie on TV anchors and films, etc, that a bunch of similar changes are propagating. (Like the disappearance of the dative whom)

[larryhammer]

The propagation of those two slashes well predates the 70s, though. Usage prescriptivists were frothing about 'em a century ago.

Whom, I'm more unsure of the timing, but I'm pretty sure I've seen complaints about that from WWII or so. Maybe? Need to research.

---L.

[kate_nepveu]

Let's hang in love from the gallows.

[larryhammer]

Hee. Rather different from what I was listening to. (Actually it was the cover by Solas, which I prefer, but I can't find a link for that.)

---L.

[kate_nepveu]

Yeah, just a little!

[theironchocho.livejournal.com]

I love sugar gliders so much I gave my main character in the novel I'm working on one as a pet.

[larryhammer]

Hee.

They do add instant cuteness to a project.

---L.