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Sentence first
Personal blog · stancarey.wordpress.comwriting
Sentence first is a personal blog at stancarey.wordpress.com about writing. Since 2015, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 15 times, most often “Yan tan tethera pethera pimp – an old system for counting sheep (2013)”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-26, and you can follow it by feed.
An Irishman's blog about the English language.
Most-linked posts?
- Yan tan tethera pethera pimp – an old system for counting sheep (2013)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-03-24
What Hacker News says?
Thinking about language usage as "wrong" or "right" might not be the most helpful way to think about it: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2010/02/16/descriptivism-vs-... (p.s. not saying there's no wrong or right when it comes to ideas themselves)
Comment linking /2010/02/16/descriptivism-vs-prescriptivism-war-is-over-if-you-want-it/
on “Issue 914451: Autofill does not respect autocomplete="off"”Submitted Yan tan tethera pethera pimp – an old system for counting sheep as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYou opened a can of worms for me. As a non-native (but very comfortable) English speaker I wasn't quite sure about the pronunciation of "eschew" because I can't remember to have ever used it, or when I last heard it. https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2016/02/19/how-do-you-pronou... Turns out there is a multitude of pronunciations to choose from.
Comment linking /2016/02/19/how-do-you-pronounce-eschew/
on “Four Million Commutes Reveal New U.S. 'Megaregions'”Submitted The Trouble with Harry’s Grammar as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMerriam-Webster has the verb "to buffalo" as going back to 1891, with no notion of it being specific to any particular locale. The OED says it's "North American slang," while Google's dictionary calls it "informal". I've certainly heard it in conversation on the east and west coasts of the U.S. (albeit very occasionally). [Added:] For all sorts of American examples over the decades, see https://stancarey.wordpress.c…
Comment linking /2018/04/23/buffaloed-by-the-verb-buffalo/
on “A History of the Sentence "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo." (1999-2015)”Submitted Yan tan tethera pethera pimp – an old system for counting sheep (2013) as a story · 2 points
HN discussion"literally" was used the way teenagers use them now in old literature too: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/literally-centuri... But yeah people using this term still grinds my gears.
Comment linking /2011/01/31/literally-centuries-of-non-literal-literally/
on “SF fines two landords $2.25M for illegal Airbnb rentals”Submitted Gelett Burgess and the Invention of the Blurb as a story · 1 points
HN discussionYes I was kind of wondering if this is a new thing, like because[0,1,2] or if it's canonical English. I was looking for an analysis like [0] on this, but I couldn't find any. 0: http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/72252671648/why-the-new-... 1: http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/because-a... 2: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2013/11/13/because-has-becom...
Comment linking /2013/11/13/because-has-become-a-preposition-because-grammar/
on “What is a kubelet?”Submitted ‘Like’ is an infix now, which is un-like-believably innovative as a story · 1 points
HN discussion"Hiking boots" has the same problem -- the boots aren't themselves hiking, they're boots for use in hiking. That's another noun-noun compound. "Mixed-breed puppy" is, to me, not such a clear case ("breed" is clearly originally a noun, but maybe this use is common enough to have converted). But you don't need to use spurious examples -- in another comment, you provided a very genuine one: "red" and "wooden" are both…
Comment linking /2015/04/28/cutthroat-compounds-in-english-morphology/
on “What part of speech is “the”? (2006)”Oligarchy means government by the few: https://www.etymonline.com/word/oligarchy (although today we tend to use it as a synonym for plutocracy, which is government by the rich). So the opposite of oligarchy would be democracy. Aristocracy means government by the best: https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=aristocracy , so kakistocracy would be its strict opposite. In fact, it was probably coined for that reason, since…
Comment linking /2011/11/28/the-monstrous-indecency-of-hybrid-etymology/
on “Kakistocracy”From the HN "Boustrophedon" discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15539373 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boustrophedon https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15547162 DonHopkins on Oct 25, 2017 | prev | next [–] Scott Kim has a wonderful talent at designing "ambigrams". Check out his classic book "Inversions" and his gallery of more recent work! http://www.scottkim.com.previewc40.carrierzone.com/inversion..…
Comment linking /2012/10/18/scott-kims-symmetrical-alphabet/
on “Visual Anagrams: Generating Optical Illusions with Diffusion Models”https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2015/12/09/raising-the-quest... "There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter."
Comment linking /2015/12/09/raising-the-question-of-beg-the-question/
on “Netscape and Sun announce JavaScript (1995)”> Too, the database state is inspected to check for any side effects. This is such a weird sentence. "Too,"? Replace with "Also," https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/too-its-a-strange...
Comment linking /2011/12/01/too-its-a-strange-usage/
on “My Tests Are Slow”
