Newly Ancient

Are you a boodle? (That would be a stupid noodle.) Perhaps prothodaw more fittingly describes you as a prime simpleton, a noodle of the first rank. The Oxford English Dictionary contains many of these amusing archaic definitions, including murinoid: resembling the mouse or its allies. Sadly, with the online revision begun in 2000, these definitions are going the way of the Dodo. In a recent column for the New York Times, Ammon Shea morns their loss and highlights some of the more humorous specimens. An excellent read for a lazy weekend.

George Orwell posited that thought could be controlled and manipulated through the language we speak (in his case, Newspeak). Many other philosophers and scientists have pondered this question, while most politicians simply accept it as fact and use it to their advantage. However, there has been a disturbing lack of empirical evidence for this phenomena. A psychologist at Stanford has conducted a study showing that the gender of nouns in a language influence our perceptions of that noun. The French, who use the masculine pont for bridges, generally highlight their elements of power and strength, while Germans (who use the feminine Brücke) describe bridges as elegant and airy. You can see the bridge for yourself at NPR and see which set of adjectives matches your perceptions. Does this make English more neutral and accurate, since it largely lacks gender?

Via the excellent linguistic twit ThatWhichMatter.