Cocks and Weathervanes

by Brandy | Apr 14, 2023

On the convoluted origin of words   Sometimes things are not what they seem.   That’s true with a lot of things, but with words in the English language, it’s more common than not that a word might be so convoluted in origin as to be bordering on the...

Tautology or repetition in the English language  

by Brandy | Jan 25, 2023

Most of us have, by dint of a slip of the tongue or while over explaining something or other, managed to say something that ended up being ridiculously repetitive or tautological. Think of phrases like “fortified fort“. You say it, take a second, and realize how...

Words and Pragmatics

by Brandy | Aug 22, 2022

Or why what you think you’re saying means more than what you’re saying In colloquial usage, pragmatic means to be practical, to deal with things sensibly and realistically with all practical concerns taken into consideration. While I rather love this form...

Everything is Derivative ( and so is your face)

by Brandy | Aug 15, 2022

Edward Elmer Smith is a (contemporarily) mostly completely unknown science-fiction writer, his claim to fame being over 200 short-ish stories and novellas published in the iconic Sci-Fi magazines of the 1915s and 20s, namely IF Worlds of Science Fiction and Amazing...

Mansplaining is the death of discourse: Polarization and the loss of nuance  

by Brandy | Mar 11, 2022

Not a clickbait title or anything ™   The Overton window is the concept that there’s a widow of acceptable opinions/policies which are held by the mainstream of any given generation, but which moves on a generation-by-generation basis. Historically the...

Your argument is a building, and that makes perfect sense  

by Brandy | Feb 21, 2022

Metaphor is the concept of a word or phrase which stands for an abstract concept. Sort of like using words as iconography – this one thing is like this other thing, not because they are the same but because it makes sense to understand the one in the context of the...