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Geoffrey K. Pullum: 2 ideas worth knowing

2 ideas from Geoffrey K. Pullum, each explained in a minute and credited to the original work. Free on Savvy.

• The '100 Eskimo words for snow' claim is mostly a linguistic myth

  The idea that Eskimo–Aleut languages have vastly more words for snow than English spread through decades of casual retelling, each version inflating the count further with little e…

  — Geoffrey K. Pullum, The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language

• Calling it 'old-timers' disease' instead of 'Alzheimer's' isn't a mistake — it's a pattern

  An eggcorn is what happens when someone mishears an unfamiliar word or phrase and unconsciously replaces it with something that sounds similar and actually makes a kind of sense — …

  — Geoffrey Pullum & Mark Liberman, Eggcorn

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