Educational Annotations

Some of the comics have (more or less) informative annotations on a variety of topics. This is a list of the more educational ones, sorted by subject tags. Some annotations are listed under multiple subjects.

Comics tagged: linguistics

• 520 - Hydrogen combustion; German language; zeppelin safety
• 559 - Flammable versus inflammable; English etymology
• 618 - English as a living language; good new English; bad new English; Shakespeare
• 820 - Etymology of "xenomorph"
• 989 - Latin conjugation and place names
• 1094 - Latin translation
• 1130 - Lent; lentils; lenses
• 1246 - Cockney
• 1349 - Irony; English usage; descriptivism versus prescriptivism; organic food
• 1351 - Accented characters in English; loan words
• 1391 - Etymology of "poppet"
• 1470 - Spanish language; pieces of eight; computer bits; parity
• 1494 - Naval jargon; how to sail a square-rigged vessel out of port
• 1537 - Spanish language; translation difficulties
• 1731 - Etymology of "titbit"; bowdlerisation of language
• 1740 - English semantics; women's prerogative; physiological sex differences and influence on social custom
• 1767 - Biscuits; British English; American English; Latin; Italian; German; interconnectedness of languages
• 1769 - Gender-neutral pronouns; prescriptive grammar; singular "they"
• 1902 - Shovels versus spades; English usage
• 1964 - "Man" versus "elf" and other fantasy races
• 2022 - Assonance
• 2031 - "Bupkis"; words we understand but never use
• 2039 - Pronouns; declining pronouns
• 2055 - "Fortnight"
• 2107 - "Computer"
• 2116 - "Software"
• 2137 - Comparative and superlative
• 2244 - "Wharf", "pier", and "jetty"
• 2301 - "Literally"; language drift
• 2343 - "Fuschia"; "orange"
• 2370 - "Tinker's cuss"; "tinker's damn"
• 2382 - "Wolf" in German
• 2387 - The Rosetta Stone
• 2392 - "Atom"
• 2411 - "Zeitgeist" in English and German
• 2442 - Metaphors involving words nobody uses outside the metaphor
• 2475 - Gerunds
• 2519 - "Suffer"
• 2641 - Rhoticity
• 2657 - "Scientist"
• 2690 - "Right whale"
• 2694 - "E pur si muove"; "punk"; Measure for Measure
• 2736 - "Petroleum"
• 2784 - "Magazine"
• 3026 - Figurative use of "literally"
• 3138 - Words coined by Shakespeare
• 3282 - Learning Italian
• 3304 - Imagery; simile; metaphor; figures of speech
• 3398 - "hieroglyphs" versus "hieroglyphics"
• 3400 - Ciphers versus codes
• 3410 - Capitalisation of alien species names
• 3431 - Djinn and genies; computer programming; computer languages
• 3432 - Tzatziki; dips versus sauces
• 3526 - Biscuits and cookies
• 3558 - Cannibalism and sophiophagy
• 3587 - Emojis
• 3664 - Apostrophes in place names
• 3772 - Circle of Life lyrics
• 3786 - "Fortnight" and slang
• 3851 - "Cupboard" versus "closet" versus "cabinet"
• 3919 - "Conversation piece"
• 3944 - Portmanteau words; portmanteau luggage; Oliver Heaviside; complex numbers in electrical engineering; the Heaviside layer
• 3966 - "Takes the cake"
• 3982 - Dire wolves
• 4019 - "Burley" versus "chum"; Jaws
• 4051 - "Invoke"; alliteration versus assonance
• 4067 - "Jack of"; "jack" as an adjective
• 4094 - Etymology and pronunciation of "lich"; usage in fantasy literature
• 4155 - Plural of "gin and tonic"
• 4246 - Yuan-ti; pronunciation of unknown words
• 4336 - "Knock knock" in Latin
• 4434 - The Italian verb sudare and auxiliary verbs
• 4670 - "on second thoughts" vs. "on second thought"
• 4722 - Werewolves
• 4762 - Plains, and plain
• 4966 - "Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries"
• 5054 - Cross-linguistic and cross-species onomatopoeia
• 5258 - American English compared to Early Modern English

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