Anne Curzan
Contributor, That’s What They SayAnne Curzan is the Geneva Smitherman Collegiate Professor of English and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan. She also holds faculty appointments in the Department of Linguistics and the School of Education.
As an expert in the history of the English language, Anne describes herself as a fount of random linguistic information about how English works and how it got to be that way. She received the University’s Henry Russel Award for outstanding research and teaching in 2007, as well as the Faculty Recognition Award in 2009 and the 2012 John Dewey Award for undergraduate teaching.
Anne has published multiple books and dozens of articles on the history of the English language (from medieval to modern), language and gender, and pedagogy. Her newest book is Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History (2014). She has also created three audio/video courses for The Great Courses, including “The Secret Life of Words” and “English Grammar Boot Camp.”
When she is not tracking down new slang or other changes in the language, Anne can be found running around Ann Arbor, swimming in pools both indoor and out, and now doing yoga (in hopes that she can keep running for a few more years to come).
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Some things go together like peas and carrots. Others go together like carrots and sticks, which could mean a lot of different things, depending on how you use this phrase. -
Possible objections notwithstanding, the Canadian Justice Department has recommended that "notwithstanding" be replaced in legal writing. But why? The answer takes us deep into some pretty nerdy weeds.
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Surface roads can be highways, but they don't have to be. Surface roads can also be surfaced, but again, they don't have to be.
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Our fellow word nerds at Merriam Webster are watching the phrase "the Streisand effect." At least one of our listeners is watching it too, and alerted us to the verb "to Streisand."
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Confronted with a long chair on which one longues, some American English speakers call it a "chaise longue" and some call it a "chaise lounge."
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Knowing the different conversational meanings of a phrase like "I'm busy" is an important part of knowing how to use a language.
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When people watch or study something intently, there certainly is an intensity to that. We wouldn't call these words interchangeable though.
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At some point you probably learned that words like "wife" and "life" are spelled with a "v" instead of "f" in plural form. Easy enough, until you found out plenty of other words, like "roof" and "sheriff," don't follow this rule.
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Frequent listeners of That's What We Say know how we much we love to talk about the constant phenomenon of words changing in meaning and use. This week we tackle three examples, including a question about the past participle of "chide."
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Frequent listeners of That's What We Say know how we much we love to talk about the constant phenomenon of words changing in meaning and use. This week we tackle three examples, including a question about the past participle of "chide."
