6 Matching Annotations
  1. Jun 2023
    1. Commentators insisted that gossip was the province of women. Originally meaning ‘godparent’, ‘gossip’ shifted its meaning across the early modern period. It became commonplace to accuse women of gossiping and of being gossips, and a set of meanings crystallised around the word that reflected men’s anxiety about what women were saying about them behind their backs.
  2. Mar 2023
    1. Auch das grammatische Verhalten eines Wortes nach Flexion und Rektion ist der Sammlung vollständig zu entnehmen. Und schließlich und vor allen Dingen lag hier der Schlüssel zur Bestimmung der Wortbedeutungen. Statt jeweils ad hoc durch Konjekturen einzelne Textstellen spekulativ zu deuten (das Raten, von dem Erman endlich wegkommen wollte), erlaubte es der Vergleich der verschiedenen Zusammenhänge, in denen ein Wort vorkam, seine Bedeutung durch systematische Eingrenzug zu fixieren oder doch wenigstens anzunähern. Auch in dieser Hinsicht hat sich das Zettelarchiv im Sinne seines Erstellungszwecks hervorragend bewährt.

      The benefit of creating such a massive key word in context index for the Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache meant that instead of using an ad hoc translation method (guessing based on limited non-cultural context) for a language, which was passingly familiar, but not their mother tongue, Adolph Erman and others could consult a multitude of contexts for individual words and their various forms to provide more global context for better translations.

      Other dictionaries like the Oxford English Dictionary attempt to help do this as well as provide the semantic shift of words over time because the examples used in creating the dictionary include historical examples from various contexts.

  3. Feb 2023
    1. Lois Hechenblaikner, Andrea Kühbacher, Rolf Zollinger (Hrsg.): «Keine Ostergrüsse mehr! Die geheime Gästekartei des Grandhotel Waldhaus in Vulpera». Edition Patrick Frey, 2021.Der reich bebilderte Band bietet eine spannende Reise in ein Stück Schweizer Tourismusgeschichte: Die Herausgeber haben die 20'000 Karteikarten aus den Jahren 1920-1960 sehr sorgfältig kuratiert, nach Themen gegliedert und in einen grösseren, gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhang gestellt.Die Leserinnen und Leser erfahren viel über die Klientel im Hotel Waldhaus, zum Teil sogar in kleinen biografischen Porträts; und sie können an konkreten Beispielen verfolgen, wie sich der Sprachgebrauch der Concierges im Laufe der Zeit verändert – gerade zum Beispiel im Zusammenhang mit jüdischen Gästen.

      Google Translate:

      Lois Hechenblaikner, Andrea Kühbacher, Rolf Zollinger (editors): «No more Easter greetings! The secret guest file of the Grandhotel Waldhaus in Vulpera". Edition Patrick Frey, 2021.

      The richly illustrated volume offers an exciting journey into a piece of Swiss tourism history: the editors have very carefully curated the 20,000 index cards from the years 1920-1960, structured them by topic and placed them in a larger, social context.

      The readers learn a lot about the clientele in the Hotel Waldhaus, sometimes even in small biographical portraits; and they can use concrete examples to follow how the concierge's use of language has changed over time - especially in connection with Jewish guests, for example.

  4. Jan 2023
    1. Semantic change   Change in a word's meaning over time or other dimensions. Klein measures semantic change for a given word by tracking: 1) the words that appear alongside it (i.e., the word's context), and 2) the year in which the word was published. This approach assumes that semantics, or meaning, of a word can be inferred from the context in which that word appears.
  5. Feb 2022
    1. Make fleeting notes. Always have something at hand to write withto capture every idea that pops into your mind.

      Fleeting notes are similar to the sorts of things one would have traditionally kept in a waste book.


      Francesco Sacchini recommended the use of two notebooks:

      “Not unlike attentive merchants... [who] keep two books, one small, the other large: the first you would call adversaria or a daybook (ephemerides), the second an account book (calendarium) and ledger (codex).” —Francesco Sacchini "Chapter 13". De ratione libros cum profectu legendi libellus. Wurzburg. p. 91. (1614).

      (See also Blair, Ann M. (2004). "Note taking as an art of transmission". Critical Inquiry. 31 (1): 91. doi:10.1086/427303.)

      The root word ephemeral in this context is highly suggestive of the use and function of fleeting notes.


      The Latin word "ephemerides" can also be translated as "newspaper", useful for only a short period of time.


      Recall also that in a general sense Cicero contrasted the short-lived memoranda of the merchant with the more carefully kept account book designed as a permanent record.

      Reference: Cicero (1930). Pro Quinto Roscio comoedo oratio,"The Speeches". Translated by Freese, John Henry. Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 278–81.

  6. Mar 2021
    1. The English word "man" used to mean "human being" exclusively, while today it predominantly means "adult male," but its semantic field still extends in some uses to the generic "human"