Doc Searls Weblog

Just trying to make stuff happen

Required re-reading

A pause this Thanksgiving weekend to appreciate The Word Detective, which has been around forever, which is to say since 1995.

I remember The Word Dectective from way back in the Early Daze, when there were relatively few websites (say, 103 or 104, 5 or 6 of them) and it was already obvious, to their few million visitors, that The Net was not only going to change everything, but was a worldwide virtual environment that would change the existing physical one even as it changed itself.

I re-discovered The Word Detective this morning when I wanted to find the source of the saying “waiting for the other shoe to drop”. I looked it up on Google and found that The Word Detective had the closest approach to a canonical result, way back on 23 May 2001.

Being an online periodical of sorts, TWD is now produced on WordPress (View Source tells me), which is way cool, because it has always been, essentially, a bloggy kinda thing. It has a sideblog as well.

Check ’em out. If your interests run in an etymological direction, the TWDs are worthy of bookmarks (remember those?) or better.

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Doc Searls

2 responses to “Required re-reading”

  1. vanderleun Avatar
    vanderleun

    Hey, I remember that site from the Stone Age as well.

    Thanks for the pointer.

    Reply
  2. Josh Weinberger Avatar
    Josh Weinberger

    And a particularly timely pointer, as well.
    That is, your November 2008 post is vaguely near to the January 2009 plea for help from the guys behind the Word Detective site:

    Quoting from this URL: http://www.word-detective.com/2009/01/14/a-message-from-inky-the-cat/

    …in 2009, The Word Detective is celebrating its 15th year as a free resource for the internet community. Yay! Unfortunately, we’re celebrating by being flat broke. TWD needs your help. Although this site is free for anyone to read, its continued existence depends on subscribers and contributors. Please consider subscribing or, if you can’t swing $15 per year, contribute $1, $5, or whatever you can afford. The second PayPal button on that page accepts amounts as small as ten cents. With your help, we’ll be here next time you visit.

    Anyway, I’m not shilling for them on commission — I just know how much pleasure and enjoyment I’ve gotten on the utterly random occasions I’ve ventured over there over the last 15(!) years… thought it was worth mentioning they may be on the verge of fading away.
    j.

    Reply

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