Anne Curzan
Contributor, That’s What They SayAnne Curzan is the Geneva Smitherman Collegiate Professor of English and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan. She also holds faculty appointments in the Department of Linguistics and the School of Education.
As an expert in the history of the English language, Anne describes herself as a fount of random linguistic information about how English works and how it got to be that way. She received the University’s Henry Russel Award for outstanding research and teaching in 2007, as well as the Faculty Recognition Award in 2009 and the 2012 John Dewey Award for undergraduate teaching.
Anne has published multiple books and dozens of articles on the history of the English language (from medieval to modern), language and gender, and pedagogy. Her newest book is Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History (2014). She has also created three audio/video courses for The Great Courses, including “The Secret Life of Words” and “English Grammar Boot Camp.”
When she is not tracking down new slang or other changes in the language, Anne can be found running around Ann Arbor, swimming in pools both indoor and out, and now doing yoga (in hopes that she can keep running for a few more years to come).
-
The New York Times announced that the Merriam-Webster Dictionary “is wordsmaxxing” and NBC News described it as a “glow-up” of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. -
Concerns about redundancy are back this week. It's the exact same thing we’ve talked about before, but this time about the expression "exact same."
-
This may be one of the only times that throw pillows, golf, and curling all get wrapped into the same discussion.
-
While people may agree that being proactive is a positive trait, the word proactive can elicit some very negative reactions, so to speak.
-
Is your cat running around in circles? Be advised, that kitty might be pixilated.
-
When we talk about Middle English, it suggests that we know when English began and when it ends.
-
There are lots of cards we can still play now, but we’ve lost some good ones too.
-
There are lots of cards we can still play now, but we’ve lost some good ones too.
-
If "hunky dory" means the same thing as "right as rain," then we face the question of how right rain is.
-
While we may know highfalutin language when we hear it, we don't all agree about how to spell "highfalutin" or where it comes from.
