Verbatim is no longer publishing. However, this is a fan site dedicated to the legacy of Verbatim. Please enjoy the archives we were able to find and share with you all!
What’s Verbatim? Verbatim is a magazine devoted to what is amusing, interesting, and engaging about the English language and languages in general. We strive to bring fascinating topics out of the dusty obscurity of dry linguistic scholarship and polish them up for the general reader with an intelligent interest in language. We gently poke fun at the messes people can get into with English and the misunderstandings that arise from our common language. All this, plus a generous helping of book reviews, should provide an hour or two’s diversion for the person interested in language.
VERBATIM Online Issues
Visit No Deposit Promo Codes for promo code reviews and online deals.
VERBATIM Articles, Book Reviews, News
Word Words
Jon O. Newman United States Circuit Judge We need some new words to describe words. English already has several well known -onym words (from the Greek onyma meaning 'name'), such as synonym (same meaning), antonym (opposite meaning), and homonym (same sound). Less...
Winter 2000 Back Issue
Where Did He Put The Pen of My Aunt? Navajo Revealed David C. Cates Maplewood, New Jersey Intricate miracles underlie even ordinary events like sunshine, eyesight, and air. Yet their ordinariness seems to stifle the kindling of wonder. This may be the point of a...
A Quick Fox Jumps over the Cwm Fjord-Bank Glyph Biz
Russell Slocum Reading, Pennsylvania A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog is a popular grammar school writing exercise incorporating all 26 letters of the alphabet in a 33-letter sentence. For those wishing to shorten the lesson, it may also be the seed of an...
Antedate Dictionary Citations
David Shulman New York City this article originally appeared in VERBATIM vol 2. no. 2, in February 1976 In VERBATIM II, 1, appeared an interesting article on dictionary citations in general. This article, however, is intended to complement it by describing only a...
Signs in Contemporary Culture: An Introduction to Semiotics
Signs in Contemporary Culture: An Introduction to Semiotics, By Arthur Asa Berger, xiii + 255 pages, Second Edition, 1999 (1st edition, 1984) Sheffield Publishing Company, Salem, Wisconsin. When I was an undergraduate majoring in linguistics, out of all the taboo and...
Epistolae 243
While reading William Dougherty’s article "Bromides" (XXIV/1) about the reluctance that physicians exhibit in speaking frankly about their patients’ life-threatening conditions, using euphemisms and circumlocutions, I remembered an experience I had that illustrates...
Preposition Pollution
Foreigners trying to learn English often have more trouble with our prepositions than with any other feature. But I see and hear so many awkward uses of prepositions lately that I think we all have more trouble with them than with any other feature--and more trouble...
Reading the Traces of James Murray in the Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary has often been described, rightly, as a remarkably readable set of books. Rose Macaulay’s description of "the inexhaustible pleasure to be extracted from the perusal of this dictionary" is typical of a long series of similar responses,...
Graphic Account
As code, is how the alphabet Began in use. Visible ink. Cuneiform, which few regret, Did everything most people think Essential in a writing system For three millennia of sale, Gift, loan-could number, name, and list them, Hard copy, should agreement fail. It was so...
Certain Somebodies
"There was a certain man..." begins many a parable; yet the identity of the man is anything but certain. Monty Python's reluctant messiah in The Life of Brian, dropped by a joyriding space buggy onto a Jerusalem Speakers' Corner, tries to blend in: "There were these...
243 Crossword Answers
Across 1. GEMSTONE (anag.) 5. S(CR)EAM 10. UN(IT)E 11. ME(A + TEA)TER 12. METAL (mettle hom.) 13. DETOURING (anag.) 14. TRIG + GERMAN 17. BASS (base hom.) 19. VISA (hid.) 20. ATMOSPHERE (anag.) 23. MILES + TONE 25. TULLE (tool hom.) 27. OPERATIVE (rev.) 28. PRIZE (2...
Believe it or Not
A new issue! Several, in fact, but here's the Table of Contents for the first of the new issues:Qat in Yemen Gregory Johnson Three Limericks Max Gutmann Cuckoo for Crack Mark Peters My Genetic Code Louis Phillips User-Friendly Turkish Martin Gani Linguistic Larceny:...
Quick Post: Noun Overuse Phenomenon
A subscriber from long ago rediscovered us again today, and asked particularly after one article: Noun Overuse Phenomenon Article, from Vol. 2, No. 4. So there it is -- click on the link to read it. It's a favorite!Please remember that if you are ordering VERBATIM as...
New issue on the way!
Vol. 32 No. 1 is making its way to the printer tomorrow; check out the table of contents for the new issue:Are Prepositions Necessary? by Rosemarie OstlerHanky-Panky, Hugger-Mugger, and Other Reduplicative Rhyming Compounds, by Amy Shuffelton and Jessy RandallThe...
I May Already Be a Wiener
Gary Wiener Pittsford, New York As a startup on my computer I have this soundbite: Homer Simpson, down on himself as usual, in dubious assessment of his self-worth, saying, "I am a WEE-NER." Homer surely evokes a good chuckle from his audience, and best of all, the...
The Winter 1999 (Vol. XXIV, No. 1) issue of VERBATIM, The Language Quarterly
Bowdlerism in the Barnyard by Hugh Rawson Airspeak by Paul J. Sampson A Brief History of the Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (OSPD) by Daniel L. Pratt How To Speak Like a Corporation by David Galef CLASSICAL BLATHER: On the Art of Translation, and Vice Versa by...
Dictionaries of Hard Words Come Easy
Ramona R. Michaelis Supervising Editor Funk & Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary One of the major problems that faces the lexicographer at the start of a new dictionary is, quite simply, the selection of entries for definition. Of the total English word stock of...
Erin McKean
Erin McKean has wanted to be a lexicographer since she was eight years old. After reading an article in the newspaper about the publishing of the supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary, she realized that making dictionaries would be a cool job. (Luckily, she...
A Bawdy Language
A Bawdy Language: How A Second-Rate Language Slept Its Way to the Top, by Howard Richler, Stoddart, 1999. ISBN: 0-7737-3186-5. 208 pp. $15.95/£9.86 As you might guess from the title, A Bawdy Language is a rather irreverent and almost relentlessly topical romp through...
Letters
Dear Sir: Just a couple of SIC!s from Vol. 24 No. 1. 1. In the article "The Last Pibroch", the author writes of clan chiefs memorizing a few words of Gaelic "to impress visiting dignatories." Is this the Gaelic for "dignitaries"? 2. Concerning Odet's use of the word...
On Blue Moons, and Others
Nature has favored us with a single large satellite with two felicitous peculiarities: It always turns the same face towards us, and it appears exactly the same size in the sky as our sun. The latter property makes a total solar eclipse, if we are fortunate enough to...
VERBATIM
The Language Quarterly
Language and linguistics for the layperson since 1974
http://letterfrequency.org – letter and word frequencies
Digital Dining Room – free storytelling and blogging lessons
Story Bistro – free tips for branding, blogging, and marketing
preparing-faculty.org – preparing future faculty program
USA Today Educate – free educational resources