35. Word Evolution

Scientific American has an online article about the evolution of words [CLICK HERE].

This entry was posted on October 11, 2007 at 6:52 am and is filed under Notices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “35. Word Evolution”

  1. Orange Says:
    October 11, 2007 at 9:13 am

    Thanks for the link, Pat. I am glad to know that 1,200 years ago, the past tense of slink was slunk. Mind you, the American Heritage Dictionary also lists that as the first spelling for the past tense, so who’s convinced the SA authors that it’s slinked now? I mean, I have never slinked, but I’ve definitely slunk.

  2. Patrick Merrell Says:
    October 11, 2007 at 9:33 am

    It does seem the Harvard researchers could have used a better example than the slinked/slunk one. (Just to be clear, SA is reporting about two studies published in Nature.) I see now that slink can also mean to give birth prematurely, mostly for a farm animal. Slinked is the preferable past tense for that.

  3. Orange Says:
    October 14, 2007 at 9:31 pm

    I can’t say I’ve ever slinked…unless it also works for humans, in which case I have! And there’s no other handy one-word verb for that in people.

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