Word of the day: hack

I'm currently reading the anthology London: City of Disappearances, edited by Iain Sinclair. One of the essays in the collection, Alan Wall's 'Grub Street', has a lot of interest to say on the word 'hack' (as in hack writer or journalist).

If I could, I'd share the entire essay with you, but here are a couple of extracts:

Deriving as it does from a hackney horse, as in hackney carriage, and therefore something put out to hire, the term [hack] is used throughout the eighteenth century to mean a sorry creature, raddled and worn-out, a jade.

Johnson's Dictionary doesn't refer to writing at all under his entry for Hack; it is merely a matter of putting oneself out for hire. But the next meaning of the word listed, and one that was current at the time, is prostitute, for the hack sold his brain and his lexicon in exactly the same way that a drab sold her body.

AdSense, the NHS and Camel cigarettes

Google's AdSense can be slightly strange. I write a post about camels, and AdSense serves up the following advertisement on the blog:


I can understand the confusion between camel the animal and Camel the cigarette, but is the National Health Service only helping Camel smokers to quit now? Do the other brands no longer kill you?

Beavers! Introduced to the wild!

A story in today's Daily Mail begins:

They have not been introduced to the wild for more than 400 years.

But yesterday two families of beavers were released in Britain – to the anguish of anglers and the delight of environmentalists.

This implies that beavers were "introduced to the wild" more than 400 years ago, when I'm pretty sure that they just happened to live there.

The Mail Online version of the story uses different wording, although the page title reads: "Beavers released into the wild for the first time in 500 years". Again, that suggests they were released into the wild 500 years ago.

I'm not even going to make a joke here.

Where do I get my news from?

Where do I get my news from? That's the question I've answered today.

As regular readers of this blog will know, I'm a fan of reality TV show The Apprentice (the UK version). I missed last night's episode but plan to watch it tonight via Tiscali TV's catch-up service; so as not to spoil the surprise I've spent the entire day trying not to find out which candidate was 'fired' by Sir Alan.

It's been harder than you might imagine. I couldn't watch breakfast TV this morning; I couldn't read the free papers on the train to and from work; and I had to ask three of my colleagues (all Apprentice fans) not to discuss the programme with me.

I've also had to avoid using Twitter and turn off the Firefox add-on Twitterfox just in case one of the people I follow tweeted about the show. Over lunch I couldn't read the BBC News website. I can't even link this post to the official Apprentice website for fear of finding something out.

So there you have it: I get my (Apprentice-related) news from a mixture of new media, old media, and good old-fashioned talking to people. It's been an interesting experiment, but not one I'd like to repeat in a hurry. And no, I still don't know which candidate got the sack. Ask me again in an hour!


Here are a couple of my other Apprentice-related posts:

• The Apprentice and Lorraine Tighe's eyes

• The Apprentice and the apostrophe

Google: 'Results 1-5 of about 0'

So Googling "tasked with a role" (don't ask!) and limiting the search to 'pages from the UK' gives five results.

As you can see from the unexciting screengrab below, Google rather bizarrely calls them "results 1 -5 of about 0".



But then I suppose five is "about" zero. It's certainly closer to zero than, say, seven million is.

X marks the spot

While reading a 1960s science fiction anthology this afternoon I came across the adjective papuliferous. It stopped me dead in my tracks but my OED Concise revealed that a papula is a pimple. A quick check via Google took me to wordsmith.org which had selected papuliferous (or papilliferous) as a word of the day and confirmed that it simply means "having pimples".

The author had used it to describe insolent teenagers; I plan to do likewise at the first opportunity.

Ryan Adams twice?

About a year ago I wrote about how the film title Alvin and the Chipmunks implied that Alvin wasn't a chipmunk.

On a similar theme: I recently bought an album, Cardinology, by Ryan Adams & The Cardinals. (I know; don't judge me.)

The CD packaging states: "The Cardinals are Ryan Adams, Neal Casal, Chris Feinstein, Jon Graboff and Brad Pemberton".

So if Ryan Adams is a member of The Cardinals, surely it's redundant to say Ryan Adams & The Cardinals?

Admittedly, saying that the album is by The Cardinals (including Ryan Adams) sounds a little odd.

You can't hear a hyphen

Mrs A's favourite property programme is a constant source of delight. Referring to removal of flowery wallpaper one over-excited presenter gushed: "The kitchen's been de-flowered!"

However one exhausted self-builder in the show coined a portmanteau word that I rather like. At the end of a two-year project he was asked if he would consider selling his newly completed magnum opus. "Never," he replied. "This is my deathnest."

Indigo Jones the Doom Raider

So yesterday I visited St Paul's Church in Covent Garden (pictured) with three people who shall remain nameless.

I remarked that the church had been designed by the influental architect Inigo Jones.

"I've never heard of him - but I have heard of Indigo Jones," said one of my companions.

"Indigo Jones - who's he, then?" I asked.

"You know that film, Indigo Jones the Doom Raider."

That's a movie I'd like to see: a mashup between Indiana Jones and Tomb Raider with some Inigo Jones thrown in for good measure...