''On Language'' was a regular column in the weekly ''
New York Times Magazine'' on the
English language
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the ...
discussing popular
etymology
Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the Phonological chan ...
, new or unusual usages, and other
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
-related topics. The inaugural column was published on February 18, 1979 and it was a regular popular feature. Many of the columns were collected in books.
Columnist and
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalis ...
William Safire
William Lewis Safire (; Safir; December 17, 1929 – September 27, 2009Safire, William (1986). ''Take My Word for It: More on Language.'' Times Books. . p. 185.) was an American author, columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter. He w ...
was one of the most frequent contributors from the inception of the column until Safire's death in 2009. He wrote the inaugural ''On Language'' column in 1979. starting it with the greeting: "How do you do. This is a new column about language." In more than 30 years, he contributed more than 1300 installments to the column.
Safire was succeeded by
Ben Zimmer
Benjamin Zimmer (born 1971) is an American linguist, lexicographer, and language commentator. He is a language columnist for ''The Wall Street Journal'' and contributing editor for ''The Atlantic''. He was formerly a language columnist for ''The ...
, who wrote the column until its final edition on
February 25, 2011.
About the cancellation of the column, the incoming editor of ''New York Times Magazine''
Hugo Lindgren
Hugo Lindgren is an American magazine and newspaper editor. He was the editor of ''The New York Times Magazine'' from 2010 to 2013 and the acting editor of ''The Hollywood Reporter''. He runs the production company Page 1 Productions with the fil ...
explained this and other changes to the magazine: "It is mine now. I'm in charge. We're going to be doing some significant redesign work, and have a newish magazine by the end of January. The big thing is, I want to create a kind of new identity for the front-of-the-book section. That doesn't mean that everything's being tossed out. We're looking at everything and evaluating what sort of fits."
See also
*
Philologos
Philologos is an etymology column about Yiddish, Hebrew and Jewish words and phrases. It ran for 24 years in ''The Forward''; since January 2015, it has run in ''Mosaic''. It is written anonymously.
Mira Sucharov of ''Canadian Jewish News'' wrote ...
References
External links
A collection of On Language columns published in ''The New York Times''
{{DEFAULTSORT:On Language
English language
The New York Times Magazine