Gretchen McCulloch

Hello! I'm an internet linguist! I wrote a book called Because Internet about how we use language online gretchenmcculloch.com/book I make @lingthusiasm.bsky.social, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics And I maintain a linguistics starter pack here: go.bsky.app/UUM7Gcx

In Shakespeare it’s positively adoring: Why, he is so made on here within as if he were son and heir to Mars; set at upper end o’th’ table; […]. Our general himself makes a mistress of him, sanctifies himself with’s hand, and turns up the white o’th’ eye to his discourse. (Coriolanus IV.v)

Milton, in the sublime invocation that begins Book III of PL, used the phrase to describe desperation at being blind. "...thee I revisit safe, And feel thy sovran vital Lamp; but thou Revisit'st not these eyes, that rowle in vain To find thy piercing ray, and find no dawn;"

High-fiving is widely accredited to baseball player Dusty Baker in 1977, though there are some similar gestures previously gestures. Seriously - man walked on the moon first.

And of course eye-rolling was also used to describe anti-Black racist stereotypes.

I guess all credit to the MG time travel story I read when I was an MGer and the protag finds himself in the 17th c. and has to explain "hi" to the people he meets.

I think eye-rolling was a frequent expression on the faces of PEANUTS characters—but, yeah, it wasn’t *called* “eye-rolling.” Here’s how Charles Schultz drew it:

Vaguely related: an etiquette book I once read from the late 1800s said that “thanks,” as opposed to “thank you,” was very offensive, and it elaborated via some wonderful line that I think went: “It is as if you did up your politeness in a ball and threw it at the head of your friend.”

My costume from 2014 bsky.app/profile/ivac...

schwa is the spookiest English vowel because any other vowel can become it it's like a vowel ghost cədaver skeləton devəl halləween autəmn

I totally learned this "finding" when I was taking undergrad psych, but apparently it wasn't even in the original study? Yikes

New favourite example of a crash blossom

Looking forward to giving a zines workshop tomorrow at #nwav54, whether you make it to the workshop itself or not, feel free to ask me for zines! (And thank you to the people who helped me fold them tonight!!)

In my latest for Reactor, I explore the history of nonbinary pronouns in science fiction, and why all my books have nonbinary characters.

Ever since we gave the world a tiny zine about diminutives a while back, we've been dreaming of a correspondingly huge zine about augmentatives Become a member at any level on Patreon (including free!) to see the draft of this zine before it's public next week!

bouba and kiki

beautiful

Also attn: #nwav54 people, I'm going to host a small Montreal bagel crawl to try the two main kinds of bagel hot out of the oven (St Viateur and Fairmount) late Sunday morning for anyone still in town, message me for details!

Vampires, werewolves, witches, ghosts, zombies, imposters, and frankenstein have something in common: they're all possessed by the spirit of linguistics! In this episode we get enthusiastic about various kinds of linguistic monsters 🧟‍♀️🧛🏻‍♀️👻🐺🦇

At a meta process level, I'm particularly proud of how seamlessly this episode blends some classic lingcomm fare (the etymology of werewolf!) with stuff that to our knowledge has NEVER been given a general audience explanation before, there isn't even a Wikipedia article or blog post about impostors

I see your "Tiffany is a valid medieval name" and raise you "Alexander the Great's wife was named Roxanne"

@mark-carney.bsky.social can we please get an online creator category in canada too thanks it would help a lot

@mark-carney.bsky.social can we please get an online creator category in canada too thanks it would help a lot

Thread for people interested in the meta aspects of scicomm

Dogs get the bouba kiki effect!! royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...

Coincidentally, just last night I was reading a book about the English country house that inspired Brideshead Revisited, which quoted a fawning letter to the new-money lord who’d set himself up as a moneylender to the ton. I was struck by her delicate phrasing & now I know the name for it