Today's Favorite Blogs, or How I Love Oxford ... and Words ... and Reverend Walter W. Skeat

Today I found three blogs I liked, no, loved right away. I loved them so much, I added a new blog roll category, Language Roll. (Look. It’s over there on the right. Scroll down a bit.)

@OxfordWords suddenly appeared on my Twitter feed (@TheLineBreak). The link led me to this article: Monthly Gleanings: February 2011. Oh, it was love at first syllable. The first parts of the blog entry were about split infinitives and verb agreement. Upon reading I was like, “Oh man, these are like the conversations I have in my head, but now they are coming from this guy’s head.”

Anatoly Liberman

Then. Then. Real joy. He started talking about etymologies and my favorite etymologist, Reverend Walter Skeat.

Reverend Walter W. Skeat

Liberman then wrote another thought I’ve had:

I never miss the chance of expressing my admiration for Skeat, and I am sorry that no one has published a full-length biography of this great man.

Right on, brother Liberman! Word!

(By the way, I once created a school of poetry based on Skeats. I called it Skeatsism. Also, James Joyce’s favorite book was? . . .  That’s right – Skeats’s An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. I don’t know what edition this is in the preceding link to Amazon. Oh believe me. It matters. You can tell which edition Joyce was using in Ulysses because of his underlying etymological meanings and puns. I think Joyce had the second edition. I have the third, which corrects, among other things, the etymology for cancer (a clue to Joyce using the second edition), and then there is a fourth edition, which is probably the one on Amazon in the link. I love mine. My parents got it for me for a gift. I don’t know how they found it in the early 90s before the Internet, but thanks Ma and Pa. It’s a life-changing book. My copy is just a black hardcover book. 8.5″ x 11″ with a now broken spine and pages clinging to that spine for dear life. It even has some Indo-European roots in the back. This reminds me of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (third and fourth editions). It has good etymologies and a great Indo-European dictionary in the back. More love. Swoon. (By the way, the link is to another version of the fourth edition. My looks different, and I got mine way before 2006, which is the listed release date. I like how in the “S” section, the word on the recto page header is “sincere”, and below is picture of O. J. Simpson.

Sincere

Just a funny accident of language and layout, at least in my fourth edition.))

Back to the blogs.

Then I scrolled down to learn who was writing this article, which you now know is Anatoly Liberman. There was a brief bio, which I immediately respected. There was also one link I clicked: The Oxford Etymologist.

Are you kidding?! A blog about etymology and updated every Wednesday. My heart was a flutter.

Then I clicked around and found the Oxford University Press’s blog.

It’s a warehouse of blogs, including: Current Events, Economics, History, Leisure, Literature, Reference, Religion, and Science. If it wasn’t for football, I wouldn’t need any other website.

So there are two blogs: The Oxford Etymologist and the Oxford University Press’s blog. And then I think #OxfordWords also tweeted a link to this post: Between you and me. I hate when people say, “Between you and I.” Dude! Objective case, please. Thank you.

Then I clicked the Better Writing link near the top on the left. Holy cow, Batman. Stuff about grammar, spelling, punctuation, and practical writing. I nearly fainted.

My love has been adequately expressed. I hope you enjoy these blogs, too.//