Category — Words and language

This is what the Free Rice site says about itself:

FreeRice has two goals:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

This is made possible by the sponsors who advertise on this site.

Whether you are CEO of a large corporation or a street child in a poor country, improving your vocabulary can improve your life. It is a great investment in yourself.

Perhaps even greater is the investment your donated rice makes in hungry human beings, enabling them to function and be productive. Somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. Thank you.

I just played and got to vocabulary level 50. OK, I used a dictionary for some of the words. But it didn’t always help. I couldn’t find “laina” in my Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, for instance. So I took a flying guess on … Nope, I’m not going to tell you. You’ll need to try it for yourself. It’s good for you and it’s good for the world.

I managed to contribute 600 grains of rice!

Technorati Tags: poverty, rice, vocabulary, game

Peter Smith (who lives in Thailand) has sent this link to a list of silly or unusual names that appears on the Cornwall County Council website. The list has, apparently, been compiled over the last six years from records held at the Cornwall Records Office.

The list starts with one Admonition Abbott, quickly followed by Dark Adam and finishes (the list only goes from A to C) with Penticost Cullecott, Dorcas Cutlip and Melior Cutty. One of my favourites is Sebastin Bagglehole, who appears in the records in 1641.

I can’t help but wonder, was he, perchance, a Hobbit?

Technorati Tags: personal names, Cornwall, hobbit

Q: What does the wonderful word tetrapiloctomy mean? No conferring now.

A: ??

Saturday 19 August, 2006
Congratulations to Bilo. He got the answer (with a little prompting). It is “splitting a hair four ways”.

Tetrapiloctomy is the activity of super-pedants. I count myself merely as a baseline pedant.

Technorati Tags: word, tetrapiloctomy