Friday, October 17, 2008

A Cuban in London

I enjoy Google Alerts because they keep me updated on all new "epicaricacy" citations in the Internet. This was a nice discussion of the word. I'd love to see A Cuban in London on Wordcraft!

2 comments:

A Cuban In London said...

Well, here I am, just for the briefest of moments, but I had to return the favour.

Kalleh, on researching the subject for my weekly column on all matters linguistic, I asked a language scholar who teaches at Middlesex University about this word and he assured me that the OED carried a very old definition of the term, circa 19th century. True, I have not checked this fact, for my time is limited and I don't get paid to write the column (are you reading newspapers editors?) but I will investigate further. Thank you ever so much for your clarification :-)

Once a week I venture out into the realms of language. For more than a year I have writing continuously about the pleasures and vicissitudes of raising two childre in a bilingual household (hence the name of the column), my experiences with the ever-changingnature of the English language, which I did as a major in university in Havana and my dealings with the two other languages I speak, French and German. You're more than welcomed to join the forum. May I link your blog to mine, please?

Thanks for your visit.

Greetings from London.

Kalleh said...

Great to see you here, a cuban in london, and of course you can link my Blog to yours, though I must say mine is not that great. I am not a language expert, like many on Wordcraft, so I often struggle to come up with subjects. However, I do very much enjoy learning about words and language.

So you are saying that "epicaricacy" might have been in the OED circa 19th century? Wow. That would be quite a find, if it's true. Wordcraft had a gathering in England, and we met with John Simpson, the editor of the OED, for a beer. He seemed to indicate that the "epicaricacy" wasn't ever in the OED and most likely wouldn't be since it isn't in use. For example, while it is cited 8,280 times on Google, mostly the discussion is similar to yours...defining the word and telling a bit about its etymology. However, I could have misunderstood him or maybe he isn't aware of a very early citation.

I am jealous that you can speak French and German. You must be able to speak Spanish, too, right? You are smart to spend time with your children because they grow up so fast!

Thanks for your visit!