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Getting your name in the dictionary by having something named after you might seem to be a pretty cool achievement, a way to achieve linguistic immortality. The list of things named after people is extensive. Not surprisingly, many of these items are inventions named after their creator, such as jacuzzi,…

Following a ruling by the Scottish Inner Court of Session in late February, the meaning of the word ‘sex’ in the March 2022 census in Scotland will be different to that used in the 2021 census for England, Wales and Northern Ireland. To understand the reasons for this semantic discrepancy…

Like most translators, I have a love-hate relationship with my spell checker. I begrudgingly admit it regularly saves me from crimes against punctuation and grammar, but sometimes it has a slightly hectoring tone and other times I just downright disagree with it. For better or worse, it was the Microsoft…

Ukraine is currently in the news for all the wrong reasons. Less controversially it has been hanging out in my folder of “unwritten” blog post ideas ever since I stumbled across this 2014 Time magazine article about use of the definite article “the” in the country’s name. The journalist recounts…

This blog recently examined different strategies for solving Codeword puzzles, including frequency analysis or letter counting. This involves using an understanding of the frequency of occurrence and distribution of different letters to decipher encrypted text. Frequency analysis is a specific type of cryptanalysis, which more broadly means the analysis of…

Like most kids, my three offspring regard parental advice with a hefty dose of suspicion, including when it comes to book recommendations. So, one of my proudest parenting successes was listening to the gales of laughter from my youngest child’s bedroom after I had cajoled him into reading my ancient…

Recently this blog took a brief tour of three different approaches to interpreting legal meaning in English law. These strategies range from literal interpretations to broader interpretations aimed at avoiding absurd legal results, and an even freer approach to statutory interpretation allowing judges to effectively plug gaps in the Acts…

We hear a lot about free speech, not so much about “loud speech”. But this was the topic that dominated a recent legal ruling in the UK. Dr Annette Plaut had worked as a physicist at Essex University for 30 years when she was dismissed, with the university citing the…

  Look at the shapes depicted on the left. In a 2001 study on sound symbolism, VS Ramachandran and Edward Hubbard report that 95% of people pick the right image as kiki and the left as bouba. (Subjects are told the words are from a Martian language and are asked…

‘Small men command the letter of the law. Great men serve its spirit.’ J.C. Marino The idea that someone might adhere to the letter of the law while violating its spirit is an acknowledgement that there is room for manoeuvre when it comes to interpreting legislation. Indeed, this principle is…