Category Archives: language

Not Feeling SANQUINE About This

Yet another Faceplace ad that falls between sad and funny. I’m pretty sure the Latin on this very serious “blood oath” coin is supposed to mean “what is owed in blood” (quod debitum sanguine) only they misspelled “blood” as SANQUINE, … Continue reading

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Latin Makes Your Teeth Shiny White!

I had occasion to use the word vademecum today, which doesn’t happen that often, but whenever it does I’m reminded of Vademecum toothpaste, which my mom used to use. This may be the first piece of Latin I ever learned … Continue reading

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A Fuzzy Thing Happened…

Typo of the day is trible (where I intended to type tribe). It caused me a little trouble.

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To Werror Is Human…

Typo of the day is werror (where I intended to type error). I figure a werror must be some kind of mutant werewolf produced by an experiment gone horribly wrong. “They were neither human nor wolf! You will never escape … Continue reading

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Serifer Madness

I know lots of people love the sans-serif type of font, but I hate its guts because it elides a significant distinction, between lower case L and upper case I, both appearing as the same glyph. For highly literate people … Continue reading

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Fellowship of the Thing

Apologies for my relative silence on social media. I’m engaged on a lunatic plan to write a pair of novels over the summer, and I’ve made some significant progress. This evening I got north of 20,000 words on one (a … Continue reading

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WTF?

I’m looking around online for editions of the Hrafnistumannasǫgur—which is a perfectly normal thing to do on Friday night; I don’t care what the kids down at the sock hop say—and I found a pretty decent edition for the third … Continue reading

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Viking-Era Marriage

A pleasingly domestic line in the saga I’m currently reading (which is mostly about war and killing). Ráðahagr Áka stendr með miklum blóma.—Jómsvíkinga Saga 17“Áka stands marriage with great bloom.” That’s the kind of marriage to have. I hope Þórgunn … Continue reading

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Truth or DARVO?

I was reading a harrowing story (at Vox.com) about the Vallow-Daybell murders which mentioned the concept of DARVO. It wasn’t brand-new to me, but I had sort of forgotten about it, even though the thing itself is as common as … Continue reading

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Gormless Gomes on the Ground

This afternoon I was reading up on Danish King Gorm (a.k.a Gorm the Old, a.k.a. Gorm the Lazy, a.k.a. my new role model), and idly wondered if it was the same root as the gorm in English gormless “clueless”. It … Continue reading

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