John Borwick's blog

I just took an “American accent” quiz, which concluded that I’m “neutral”:

What American accent do you have? (Best version so far)Neutral

You’re not Northern, Southern, or Western, you’re just plain -American-. Your national identity is more important than your local identity, because you don’t really have a local identity. You might be from the region in that map, which is defined by this kind of accent, but you could easily not be. … Continue Reading

I wonder where the “-zoid” and “-zor” suffixes come from?  For example, I have been calling our cat Emma “Em-zoid” today, in a robot voice.  Then I say “purr-zor” when she purrs, because it amuses me.

Where did the “zoid” and “zor” suffixes come from?  I checked Urban Dictionary but didn’t see a definitive origin.  I’m betting “-zor” as I’m using it comes from h4×0r, but I’m not sure where the “-x0r” suffix came from.

Have you seen the movie from the 1990s about “Internet”? The YouTube clip is from a news program talking about “Internet” when it was still taking off.

I realized from this movie how close we were to calling the Internet “Internet” (with no article). I actually prefer to talk about Internet without the “the” part. For example, “Yesterday on Internet I got an e-mail.” It can’t be too late: join me, drop the “the”, and talk about Internet.

Once a duplicate registration card is ordered online, it is unstoppable.
–http://www.ncdot.org/dmv/forms/

So, I just looked up whether, in North Carolina to get married, you have to have a blood test. No: you don’t need a blood test in order to get married.

I also found out that in NC, “cousin marriages” are legal. In other words, in NC you can marry your first cousin. However, “double first cousins” cannot marry. According to Wedding Vendors.com:
Yes, cousin marriages are allowed. First cousins may marry, but double first cousins may not marry. Double first cousins occur when the couple is related through both parents. For instance, Jerry marries Sally … Continue Reading

I’m a little interested in the history of the phrase “go back to the well.” We use it at work to mean “go ask for more money/capital.” Apparently ClicheSite says it means “to return to specific resource or source of information.”

Right now I’m thinking it’s Biblical in origin, but the OED hasn’t helped.

Somewhere, recently, I read the term “lede” in the course of an article, which some web pages define as “the lead paragraph of a story, spelled phonetically so it’s not confused with ‘lead’ the weighting between lines or with the metal ‘lead.’”

The funny thing is, the only relevant entry in the OED is “lede: obsolete variant of lead.” That usually means that ‘lede’ is extremely old and not worth talking about. See also Random House’s word of the day for 2000/11/28. Random House says
The spelling “lede” was not invented by journalists. This spelling … Continue Reading

One point Neal Stephenson makes in The Baroque Cycle is that people from (Western) Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries used the term “Christendom” to refer to Europe, rather than Europe.

I like the term “Christendom.” It gives me a better idea of what most people in the West are thinking about when they use like “the West”, “First-World countries,” and “developed nations.”

It could make the news a lot more obvious: “Christendom gave $100m to tsunami victims,” for example. Christendom is running out of oil.

Please check out this Amazon list of books about ninjas.

Ur-: primitive, the first. For example, “Ur-Hamlet”. It’s like saying “archetypal.”

au pair (via google): a young foreigner who lives with a family in return for doing light housework. This was not in the OED–or rather, I couldn’t find it under “au” or “pair” in the OED.