Super Bowl, Caucus, and Aphasia
Timely word stories and a fascinating study about language and brain disease
Welcome! Every so often, I round up interesting language stories that catch my eye. If you enjoy it, please check out my Grammar Girl podcast on on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or YouTube.
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Where does the ‘bowl’ come from in ‘Super Bowl’?
Wordorigins.org has a timely piece on the word “bowl.” The short answer is that stadiums are shaped like bowls. The first one seems to have been the Yale Bowl, but read on for the difference between university and professional bowls and the almost tongue-in-cheek origin of the Super Bowl.
The term “Super Bowl” is actually trademarked, which leads many bars and casinos to describe it as the “Big Game” and inspired Stephen Colbert to come up with the particularly clever alternative “Superb Owl,” which has led to people posting pictures of owls on Twitter during the game.
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Where do we get the word ‘caucus’?
I’ll be caucusing, you might be caucusing, and no matter what, it seems like everyone is talking about caucusing, which made me wonder where we get the word “caucus,” so I wrote about it.
The word might come from Algonquin, or it might come from Greek, but Founding Father (yes, it’s capitalized) John Adams mentioned a “Caucus Clubb” in his diary and in 1776 wrote, “For Gods Sake Caucass it, before Hand, and agree unanimously to push for the Same Man.”
Now I wonder which has changed more since the late 1700s, writing or caucusing.
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How aphasia presents depends on which language you speak
In this small but fascinating study of people with brain disease, researchers found that "English speakers tended to speak less while the Italian speakers had fewer pronunciation problems, but simplified what they did say."
The researchers think it is because Italian is easier to pronounce but has more complicated grammar than English.
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Tweet of the week
Useful information on “percent” versus “percentage points” from ACES: The Society for Editing
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Laugh of the week
Two boys dressed up as dinosaurs to meet their grandmother at the airport, but she got the drop on them. (The especially cute part starts at 1:27.)
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Grammar Girl podcast
This week, I discovered that Americans say that annoying phrase “could care less” more often than other people. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, or YouTube.