Grant Barrett

Just heard my first Christmas song of the season. On a Tijuana radio station. No buena.

This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b

Periodic reminder that I would love to line edit or copyedit your nonfiction books about building a better world or understanding the world with an eye toward liberation. Organizing books, academic books, books in the interstices...

Zlatan needs to give Rebecca one of those fans. @foxsports.com.web.brid.gy

Gonna need a supercut of all the World Cup slo-mo of players' and fans' lips going blub-blub-blub as they expel frustration.

It's time we talked about Irish literary exceptionalism: the fact that Irish writers and writing are unique, extraordinary, and inherently superior to all others. It's a burden to bear, but we do so with characteristic humility, grace, and magnanimity.

Apparently, in 1951 there was a character named "Grant Barrett" in an episode of the Hopalong Cassidy radio show. www.otrwesterns.com/hoppy-plays-... "Is that Grant Barrett riding the broncs?" "Young Barrett had the reputation of being a good hand with a gun."

What it’s like at the wall

Linguistics Professor Walt Wolfram Retires After 34 Years of Elevating North Carolina Voices chass.ncsu.edu/news/2026/05...

There was some question about it.

In 2019, I defended my PhD on 'It's not X, it's Y' and similar constructions, which I call contrastive negation constructions. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that 'It's not X, it's Y' would become the topic of comment pieces in newspapers. 🧵

Hi it’s me your favorite YouTuber, speaking into a cricket’s ass

we gotta stop with the tiny microphones. get a full size mic like an ADULT. you look like you’re at tea with a mouse

The Man in the Yellow Hat and Curious George went to San Diego Comic-Con! @thecomicon.bsky.social. PBS kids! @pbs.org @kpbssandiego.bsky.social

Reading Update 35 of GDoS to a less than appreciate mob. No matter. jonathongreen.substack.com/p/gdos-upgra...

I had so much fun chatting with @readersdigest.bsky.social's @joannliguori.bsky.social about the origins of slang terms like cap, simp, extra, and cringe. Check out her full list, which also features insights from the brilliant @grantbarrett.com. www.rd.com/list/origins...

Just for spit and giggles I let an autonomous coding agent go ham on a project. It whizzed through everything like a five-year-old with a bank card in a video game store. Of course, like the kid, it did the equivalent of buying a used Xbox 1, PS2 discs, and Atari controllers. But das blinkenlights!

“Sending these to shareholders in the annual report isn’t quite what we meant by preparing a self-review.”

“Ice piracy” is when a glacier "steals" ice from a neighboring one, a multi-decade change. It is considered fast in the context of ice sheets, which move at glacial speeds and geological scales, after all. tc.copernicus.org/articles/19/...

Somebody somewhere besides me should be delighted that my wordhunting scripts automatically picked up on the new but fake words invented by researchers and then mentioned in this article. www.ox.ac.uk/news/2025-05...

My favorite programming term of the week is the walrus operator from Python. := It lets Python grab a value and give it a short‑term label in one move, inside another action.

In word-hunting this week, came across a Hindi idiom: उन्नीस‑बीस का फ़र्क़ (unnīs‑bīs kā farq), also expressed as उन्नीस‑बीस का अंतर होना, which literally means “the difference between nineteen and twenty.” It's a quick way to say “there’s hardly any difference” or “only a hair’s breadth separates the two.”

Somebody had legible index cards.

"You take a complicated subject that everyone THINKS they understand and explain it in a way that people REALLY understand." @grantbarrett.com on a huge value of linguistics and lingcomm training #LingComm25

Yup. This is every "dream job": 10% doing the thing, 90% doing everything else required to get to do that 10%.

It was lovely to sit down with Adam Greenfield of "The Written Scene" podcast and have his thoughtful questions lead us into an interesting conversation. Lots of languagey tidbits! thewrittenscene.transistor.fm/episodes/epi...

Happy new year, fuckers! It's time for the Tuckers! …with your host @benzimmer.bsky.social stronglang.wordpress.com/2024/12/31/t...

@annekosseffjones.bsky.social

If you missed our live video event, catch it on the free YouTube replay! youtu.be/yYRmG9oJbXw And give us some cabbage/cheddar/dough/food-money metaphor while you are about it: waywordradio.org/donate

Ryan Starkey makes wonderful, well-researched maps about dialects and accents in Great Britain. But sometimes he gets silly.

Join us for a *free* live "A Way with Words" "Ask Us Anything" video event! December 12, 4:30 p.m. PST. Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett of the popular public radio show/podcast will lead a linguistic Q&A romp. You must register to get the video link! waywordradio.org/ask-us-anyth....

Frogs! In! Space! waywordradio.org/space-frogs/ Plus: virtuous names, fight the good fight, meteoric rise, one side or a leg off, polypoton, er er word quiz, main strength, sixth as "sikth", Irish omadhuan, tall cotton, and lots more.

Did you catch these two recent brand new episodes? Cut the Mustard: waywordradio.org/cut-the-must... and Kitten Britches: waywordradio.org/kitten-britc... #language #podcast

A professional book which is a MUST read for anyone in Language and Literacies! 7/20 #BookSky📚💫 #BookChallenge

I made a linguistics and language podcast starter pack for you, if you're looking for your new favourite linguistics podcast: go.bsky.app/5pirXas

A former student of mine, Chiara Repetti-Ludlow, has a paper on this issue :) read.dukeupress.edu/american-spe...

In the tradition of the prophet Muhammad, I have to cut off the bed linens so as not to disturb the cat.

My CUP element is finally out! 🙌 You can download it for free for a couple of weeks. Will soon post some reflections available in the book!

Traditional Irish ways to admire the force of someone's profanity: —They'd swear a hole in an iron pot —They'd curse the bladder out of a goat —They'd quench a candle the other side of the kitchen

Does anyone have a starter pack for places that accept short stories/articles? #writingcommunity #writers #authors

Solved today's Wordle in one try. ;)

San Diego High's student journalists want to fully re-establish their high school newspaper: lnkd.in/gnwzwcjn Help!

DNC needs to fix that lectern mic so it doesn't pick up the noise of speakers' hands hitting the surface.

The novel concept of the "key crush" in the world of esports. www.esports.net/news/industr...