This recent post from Lynne Murphy on Separated By a Common Language created much discussion in my Twitter feed and over dinner with a collection of American, British and Australian English speakers. Many of us have been living with semantic variation staring up in the face. Even (American English) Lynne didn’t realise her (British English) husband had a difference sense from her:
When I tweeted the question “Where is a frown?” British people told me “on the forehead”. When I asked the Englishman in my house, he said the same thing. Fourteen years together and only now do I know that he’s been frowning much of the time.
And like one of the blog commenters, the Brits I talked with had an epiphany: so that’s why Americans say “turn your frown upside down!” to mean ‘cheer up!’.
Older Australian English speakers I talked to identified the forehead frown as the sense that they have, but a frown has always been the opposite of a smile for me, all about the mouth. Otherwise, what is the opposite of a smile? It looks like we have some intergenerational semantic shift happening right under our noses.
See Lynne’s original post on Separated by a Common Language.
did you know red snapper can live for over 100 years…. whatre they DOING down there
terrifying monstrosity: who could possibly love me when I am a terrifying monstrosity me, stretched out on the table in front of them with a rose between my teeth: well
go here
http://www.myscriptfont.com/
instead of printing it off just use this blank thing that way you dont have to scan it or anything
so fill that out by pasting it in any art program and whatnot
then save it and upload it to that site
and itll give you an option to download it
so do that and then install it BAM
reunited with Macayo, one of my oldest and wisest friends. he says 2018 is going to be a perfect year and that my hair still smells like crayons. (p.s macaws can live to be 90! that’s straight up the same bird in both pics. whaaaaat?)
“i am a monument to all your sins” is such a fucking raw line for a villain it’s amazing that it came from halo, a modernish video game, and not some classical text or mythos
My favorite thing ever is how Ron just sent Charlie a random letter like “hey yo there’s an illegal dragon at hogwarts, could you come and smuggle it out of here, please?” and Charlie was just like “yeah sure, I’ll trespass into the castle and steal a dangerous magical creature, of course, lemme just hit up my friends”
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