01.05.2025 Columns Gimme Shelter: Words, words, words — 2025 edition The Reporter Institute of Language and Semantics (RILS) has, after a unanimous vote by its esteemed Board (sleep-deprived cranks) deemed the 2024 Phrase of the Year as: “Oh, my...
12.31.2021 Columns Gimme Shelter: Word(s) of 2021 What was your word or phrase that defined 2021? Topping the list, after Gimme Shelter’s team evaluated extensive research, including focus groups and wide-ranging, scientifically conducted surveys, is: “What?!”...
01.02.2020 Columns Gimme Shelter: Word play in the world of 2019 With a look back at 2019 slipping over the horizon as a smoking pile of bad rubbish (good riddance), let’s turn our attention to the sunlit uplands of 2020...
12.26.2017 Columns Gimme Shelter: Word police on patrol It’s time for Gimme Shelter’s annual report on how English — the language of Shakespeare, Emerson, Joyce and Professor Irwin Corey — fared in 2017.
12.26.2016 Columns Gimme Shelter: Words, like, literally AMBROSE CLANCY PHOTO How did the English language fare in 2016? Not to put too fine a point on it, but the last 12 months have been “unpresidented.”