Category: words

“His universal grammar was put forward as an innate component of the human mind—and it promised to reveal the deep biological underpinnings of the world’s 6,000-plus human languages. The most powerful, not to mention the most beautiful, theories in science reveal hidden unity underneath surface diversity, and so this theory held immediate appeal. But evidence has overtaken Chomsky’s theory, which has been inching toward a slow death for years.”

“It started with 176 icons. Now it’s grown to 1,800. But who decides what becomes an emoji? We lift the lid on the California coders who live and breathe smiling cats and banned aubergines.” (Note to Americans: aubergine is British for eggplant.)

“Though this year’s short list is not nearly as internationally diverse as last year’s — nominees hail only from the U.S., U.K., and Canada — there’s a significant chance a person of color could follow in the footsteps of last year’s winner, Marlon James, and take home the prize.”

“The Grolier Codex, an ancient document that is among the rarest books in the world, has been regarded with skepticism since it was reportedly unearthed by looters from a cave in Chiapas, Mexico, in the 1960s. But a new study yields a startling conclusion: The codex is both genuine and likely the most ancient of all surviving manuscripts from ancient America.”

“You are utterly familiar with the rule of ablaut reduplication. You’ve been using it all your life. It’s just that you’ve never heard of it. But if somebody said the words zag-zig, or ‘cross-criss you would know, deep down in your loins, that they were breaking a sacred rule of language. You just wouldn’t know which one.”

Some of that decline was attributed to a lack of new big hits to compete with a string of blockbusters last year, and to a cooling off of the sale of adult coloring books. A poor retail environment that cut into store traffic was another factor hurting sales, but B&N founder Len Riggio, who has returned as CEO following the dismissal of Ron Boire in August, acknowledged that B&N “[shot] ourselves in the foot somewhat by making unprecedented inventory reductions,” as well as “cutting expenses in the worst areas, mainly retail floor personnel.”

“Judging the quality of anything is murky and complicated, especially when everything under consideration meets a certain baseline standard. All of the bakers in the Bake Off are talented, and all of the books in the Booker contest have achieved a basic level of excellence.”

“What does working in a bookstore do to a writer, that isn’t done in an MFA workshop or in some other, self-cultivated environment devoted to books? For me, it’s radically expanded my reading list, my relationship to books, and how I treat the work of other writers in relation to my own.”