Author Archives: D-AW

David-Antoine Williams. I’m an assistant professor of English at St Jerome’s University, in the University of Waterloo. See “About Me” page on the menu above for details.

Life of Words Poetry Competition

Good news for Ontario secondary school students who like words: The Life of Words is announcing the first in what will be an annual poetry competition, in which we invite submissions of poems about words and reward excellence with some pretty great prizes. Here is the competition web page, where we’ll post links, news, and […]

22.03.2016 – 15:49 | By D-AW | Posted in Etymology, Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Vector Space and Poetic Logic

I’ve been spending the weekend experimenting with vector space modelling and poetic language. Vector space word embedding models use learning algorithms on very large corpora in order map a unique location in n-dimensional space to each token (=word) in the corpus. “N-dimensional space” is just a mathy-sounding way of saying that multiple (or n) features […]

14.03.2016 – 10:40 | By D-AW | Posted in Digital Humanities, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

The Best Words

The Life of Words is a bit late to this one, but: NEWSFLASH! Best Words, Best Word of Best Words, Located: Presented here without further comment, stupid. Enjoy Super Tuesday, y’all.

29.02.2016 – 20:49 | By D-AW | Posted in Language and Literature in Society | Tagged | Comments (1)

Babies say the darndest things

Everyone knows you have to start watching your language once Baby gets good at words. Even then there are moments: for a time my daughter’s impression of a snake ended with a “snap” that sounded just like… the French for “seal.” And then there’s the French for “seal,” favourite of every schoolboy, which HRW likes […]

08.02.2016 – 15:24 | By D-AW | Posted in Language and Literature in Society | Comments (0)

Bowie on OED

It’s a day for sharing David Bowie quotations on the social medias. One in particular just crossed my path: I presume the person who wrote out, photographed, and posted this little tidbit (making sure to draw attention to their book store’s own social media outposts) found it among the collected Bowie quotations on some “famous […]

11.01.2016 – 14:48 | By D-AW | Posted in Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography, Poetry | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Pullum doesn’t understand their own example

On the venerable Language Log earlier today, a post by Geoff Pullum [Annals of singular ‘they’: another case with known sex” 30.11.15] quotes Transparent writer/director Jill Soloway’s interesting use of singular they [recently named a WOTY for 2016]: People will recognise that just because somebody is masculine, it doesn’t mean they have a penis. Just […]

30.11.2015 – 21:41 | By D-AW | Posted in Language and Literature in Society | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

The Colour of Greyhounds

Do you know the old joke, “What colour was Napoleon’s white horse?” Well I have another one for you: “What colour was Napoleon’s greyhound?”. Not sure? You may consult the Official Greyhound Colour Chart: Here’s how OED sums up the situation: Apparently < a first element cognate with Old Icelandic grey bitch (further etymology uncertain: […]

26.11.2015 – 11:06 | By D-AW | Posted in Etymology, Lexicography | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Bad Boundary

Did a federal MP from Saskatchewan call a female NDP candidate a whore? [story at CNCNews.com 19.11.15]. Tom Lukiwski is alleged to have said: We got to get Greg back elected.” He’s too important of an MLA to let go down to an NDP whore just because of a bad boundary. The explanation given by Lukiwski, […]

19.11.2015 – 15:56 | By D-AW | Posted in Language and Literature in Society | Tagged | Comments (1)

Ted Cruz is no Scyld Scefing

I’ve read Beowulf. Beowulf was a friend of mine. And Senator… You know, when things sound stupid, they very usually are. And this headline sounds stupid: Ted Cruz as Beowulf: Matching Candidates With the Books They Sound Like [- The Upshot (New York Times Data Blog – click to view article)] No one who has […]

29.10.2015 – 11:44 | By D-AW | Posted in Digital Humanities, Language and Literature in Society, Poetry, Uncategorized | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Ars longa, vita brevis

The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne, Th’assay so hard, so sharp the conqueringe, The dredful joye alwey that slit so yerne, Al this mene I by love, that my felynge Astonyeth with his wonderful werkynge So sore y-wis, that whan I on him thinke, Nat woot I wel wher that I […]

23.10.2015 – 18:00 | By D-AW | Posted in Poetry | Tagged | Comments (0)