If like us, you’re a regular user of the Internet Movie Database you might be interested in something Sigrid found: there’s now a similar tool for books. You can search in the usual way with author, ISBN, title and so on. But it’s also searchable by subject, and browsable by Dewey Decimal number, period or movement, and even imaginary place!
Maarten, ever an afficionado of the small and adorable, loves the dinky little Easter Island Desktop Heads we have on the second floor in Amsterdam. Some of us are like kids in a candy store when we see Running Press products, while some more grown up ABCers fail to see the attraction of geeky trinkets in little boxes. But everyone seems to think these are cute!
Teachers! We have lots and lots of educational workbooks in stock in Amsterdam at eenie meenie prices. Most of them are on English but we have a good few on maths and a couple of other subjects too! Check the crates in the children’s corner. ( We also have a little ESL section for children section. Ask our staff to point it out!)
The one millionth word is about to enter the Oxford English Dictionary. Which word will it be? You won’t believe some of the words that they’ve already allowed in.
After all those words, a literary dessert: one of our favorite websites is Cake Wrecks, a site dedicated to professional cakes gone wrong. Except on Sundays when they showcase some amazing works of edible art. My favourite Sunday edition so far just has to be this one on children’s books.
Tags: cakes, dictionary, Easter Island, ESL, executive toys, Hayley, imdb.com, ISBN, language, lit links, Maarten, Running Press, Sigrid, teachers
I suppose they have to put the words in if people actually use them – that’s what a dictionary is, descriptive, not prescriptive (don’t get me going on that…). But do people actually use the world ‘grrrl’? (would like to see that one in phonetic script) And I’m afraid if it’s the OED we’re talking about, there’s no taking words out again (very handy if you have to look up middle-english words).
I liked bouncebackability, though – and used it without thinking the day after I first saw it
I’m sure they remove some words if they fall out of use. Don’t they? Or do they keep them in in case in 100 years someone stumbles upon the word ‘meatspace’ in an ancient internet chache somewhere and has to look it up. I know, I know, language is a constantly changing, organic, living thing, but really, ‘grrrl’? Did they HAVE to?
It is always a very interesting thing to find out which words have been added to a dictionary, especially for a Scrabble-player, but sometimes you have to wonder which bee has bitten some of the editors or whoever decides what has to be added. This “grrrl”, oh, did I put enough “r”s in it?
I liked the Cake Wrecks. A little comfort for me, who might spell correctly but whose cakes have a mind on their own.