I am trying to get out for long walks every day or so, and today I succeeded: 14,642 steps (when I happened to have the phone, my current step tracker, in my pocket). And when I go for long walks, I tend to listen to podcasts.
Today I started with Grammar Girl, talking with editor Peter Sokolowski about the very recent release of the 12th Collegiate Merriam-Webster Dictionary, an actual print edition. It's been 22 years since the 11th. This is a big deal. Okay, okay, it may only be a big deal for a language nerd like me, but seriously: big deal! Here's what I may have listened to:
I then moved on to Ezra Klein, which as always was interesting. It was his end-of-year ask-me-anything wrap-up.
And I finished with the Because Language podcast, and a conversation with Douglas Harper of the Online Etymology Dictionary. I learned interesting things about the words bulldozer, algorithm, and silhouette. For a couple of examples.
I do love thinking about language, how it works, how it means, how it distorts, how it evolves.
And if that's not enough, here's what I learned about the word algorithm:
algorithm(n.)
1690s, "Arabic system of computation," from French algorithme, refashioned (under mistaken connection with Greek arithmos "number") from Old French algorisme "the Arabic numeral system" (13c.), from Medieval Latin algorismus, a mangled transliteration of Arabic al-Khwarizmi "native of Khwarazm" (modern Khiva in Uzbekistan), surname of the mathematician whose works introduced sophisticated mathematics to the West (see algebra). The earlier form in Middle English was algorism (early 13c.), from Old French. The meaning broadened to any method of computation; from mid-20c. especially with reference to computing.
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