What’s in (or out) of a name

In case you ever wondered why you’re cheering for a group of young bears, Northern statesmen, or tiny birds, here’s a Venn diagram of baseball team names and their etymology.

• baseball
• diagrams
• etymology

You’re Safired!

Wes Felter calls for the ass fact-checking of William Safire over the latter’s article in the NY Times about blog jargon and he’s not wrong. Wes correctly notes the etymology of “weblog” and “blog” and hopefully the people responsible for things like the AP Style Guide, English dictionaries, and influential columns like On Language will, at some point, do the 20 minutes of research necessary to convince them and the unwashed journalist masses that “blog” is not and was never short for “web log”.

Safire also gets tripped up on where the word “blogosphere” came from. While William Quick’s usage in 2002 popularized the term, Brad Graham first used the term in 1999.

• etymology
• language
• weblogs
• williamsafire