Slang

by Frank James On his "Change of Subject" blog, Eric Zorn suggests Illinoisans, and presumably Americans beyond the Land of Lincoln, stop snickering at good-government activists as "goo-goos, a put-down meant to suggest that they're idealistic, head-in-...

"The Gods of Gotham" by Lyndsay Faye, Amy Einhorn Books/Putnam, 432 pages, $25.95. It is 1845. After years of dispute, New York City forms a police force. The men wear stars made of copper and they are called Copper Stars. Valentine Wilde, who was a fire...

My dad built us a playhouse when I was in third grade that was the size of many regular homes in our neighborhood at that time. It was gorgeous. It was also one of the few things that we had that other kids didn't already have first. It was bigger and...

Looking for a gift for the person who has everything? Maybe the Periodic Table of Swearing can help. The table was created by writers, cartoonists and animators Jon Link and Mick Bunnage (both of whom reside in Essex, England). The colorful table is...

It should come as no surprise that as a happy proponent of vulgarity, I don’t think there’s much point in TV, radio, newspapers and other media censoring language. Let’s focus on a specific case: the word to which my parents referred...

“Arthur Christmas” is a spirited, comically chaotic and adorably anarchic addition to the world's over-supply of holiday cartoons. It's very British, in other words — from its producers (Aardman, the folks who gave us “Wallace &...

A slew of dapper Down Under ne’er-do-wells of the ’20s and ’30s, along with a rundown of their nefarious deeds...

Bogard, 37, of Oak Park, said he tried to settle with the village but was unsuccessful. Now he is suing village officials and the Fire Department for damages. "They basically told me to pound sand," he said recently, standing outside......

Webb labeled Levine a "con man" whose oath meant nothing, calling him at one point "a wack job."...from today's Tribune story about the closing of the Bill Cellini trial Prosecutors call Cellini ‘extorter,’ defense dubs star witness ‘a...

At its most elemental, the vocoder is an instrument of deception. A mode for veiled communication -- slang in binary code. The U.S and Russian militaries used it to compress and encrypt speech to elude enemy interception, but it soon......

“The King’s Speech,” a British film being touted as a leading contender for the best picture Oscar, is a delightful, heart-warming account of how a cheeky Australian speech therapist helped King George VI conquer a terrible stammer. “Saw 3D” is....

Harvey Weinstein has been quietly fuming for weeks over the MPAA ratings board, which has slapped two of his company's films with what he considers overly restrictive ratings. "The King's Speech," a leading best picture Oscar contender about an...