Grant Barrett

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

Two young men are posing in costume at a San Diego Comic-Con. The person on the left is dressed as the Man in the Yellow Hat from the Curious George series, wearing a full yellow outfit with a tall, pointed yellow hat. The person on the right is wearing a brown monkey onesie costume, resembling Curious George. Both wear lanyards with badges reading “Dexter” and their names. Behind them is a large, cartoonish Bilbo the hobbit statue from the 1970s animated version holding a walking stick, standing on a wooden barrel. The background shows a bustling convention floor with recognizable booths, including Marvel and Dark Horse Comics.

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

GDoS Upgrade 35 Another trimester, another buncha goodies

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

The Surprising Origins of Your Favorite Slang Words Love them or hate them, these colorful phrases let us speak in shorthand. Check out the origin of slang words—and how to use them.

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!

Black-and-white single-panel cartoon. A young employee in a beanie faces her manager across a desk. The manager holds an “I DID THAT” decal and a tall stack of reports rises behind her. Caption: “Sending these to shareholders in the annual report isn’t quite what we meant by preparing a self-review.”

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

The academic papers: doi.org/10.1215/0003... doi.org/10.1215/0003... doi.org/10.1017/S095... doi.org/10.1017/S095...

Two people are shown on a television news set. A man with an Afro hairstyle and a yellow shirt sits on the left, smiling, with a laptop in front of him. A man with short hair and a grey t-shirt sits on the right, also smiling. A chyron reads, “COME ON Y’ALL! REGIONAL ACCENTS SLOWING DECLINING.”

What a fine time I had discussing changing US dialects with Maxx Fuller, Adam Llorens, and Paul Millgate, on Fox 9 in Eden Prairie, MN, using this article filled with the linguists who did the actual work as a springboard. Video: www.fox9.com/video/1643884 Springboard: apnews.com/article/migr...

Photo of Hubbard Glacier's ice front. Text overlay reads ‘ice piracy’ in orange. A small black pirate flag with a skull and crossbones is edited onto an ice peak.

“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/...

a person in a gas mask is holding a stick over their head and saying h 'rr e 'rr ALT: a person in a gas mask is holding a stick over their head and saying h 'rr e 'rr

oooh but I like that one, too

Like humans, ChatGPT favours examples and ‘memories’ – not rules – to A new study, published in PNAS, led by researchers at the University of Oxford and the Allen Institute for AI (Ai2) has found that large language models (LLMs) – the AI systems behind chatbots like

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...

:= walrus operator

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.

Stylized graphic dominated by the large Hindi words ‘उन्नीस’ (Unnees - nineteen) and ‘बीस’ (Bees - twenty) in yellow Devanagari font with dark teal accents. The full phrase ‘उन्नीस-बीस का फ़र्क’ (Unnees-Bees ka Fark) is completed with ‘का फ़र्क’ in smaller teal script below, all set against a red patterned background with colorful floral/paisley designs.

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

@marthabarnette.bsky.social and @grantbarrett.com, I blushed. I'm so glad you appreciated what I was trying to do, and thank you!

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

He is very good.

The Written Scene | Episode 75: Grant Barrett Lexicographer and linguist Grant Barrett grew up with an insatiable need to read and the bigger the books, the better.  In this episode of The Written Scene, Grant talks about how a focus on langua...

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...

The 10th Annual Tucker Awards for Excellence in Swearing How in the absolute fuck can this be the tenth installment of the annual Tucker Awards recognizing excellence in swearing? Somehow, it’s true: feast your eyes on the nine previous installment…

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

Me: AI, help me with this thesaurus.

AI: Sure! Can you figure out which one of these entries I plagiarized from somewhere on the internet?

Me: Closes browser.

"spilled-ramen handwriting"! ❤️

Agreed! LOVED the entire series.

@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

Map of Britain titled "Who brings Christmas presents in different British regions?" A few names: Northern Scotland has "Nessie", southern Scotland has "Old Man Puddin'", the North East has "big Johny Winter", Cumbria has "Tabitha the Christmas Hedgehog", Yorkshire has "Odin", West Midlands has "Replacement Bus Service", Cambridgeshire has "Professor X-mas", Wales has "Cymrawd nadolig barfog", Kent and East Sussex have "amazon.co.uk" and the rest of southern England has "father Christmas"

Ryan Starkey makes wonderful, well-researched maps about dialects and accents in Great Britain.

But sometimes he gets silly.

Does it fall open to certain pages like the copy in my middle school library did?

The image is a promotional graphic for an online event. The text reads: ASK US ANYTHING! Free Live Online Video Event December 12, 2024 4:30 p.m. Pacific Time waywordradio.org/ask-us-anything Register in advance to receive the video link The background is primarily white, with the phrase “ASK US ANYTHING!” displayed in large, bold, black text on a yellow speech-bubble-like shape. The graphic includes a playful photo of a man and a woman. The man, wearing glasses and a maroon shirt, holds a yellow circle with the logo for “A Way with Words” above his head. The woman, dressed in a blue shirt and khaki slacks, reaches for the circle, creating a dynamic and lighthearted composition.

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....

I will file the LLC paperwork just so you and I can make it happen. I think fucktionary.com is taken, tho.