dictionary prescriptivist

[calimac]

The real story behind the term "Black Friday". It wasn't meant to be cheerful.

Another term that's been retroactively re-defined: blue moon.

Comments

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

That's really interesting. I did know about blue moon.

I've noticed two recently in my own life, not yet redefined in the larger world. One I just figured out yesterday.

1) I can't use "without fail" any more, because it no longer means to me that I will do this thing, it means I won't make any harmful mistakes while doing it.
2) "A little bird told me" has not yet become a reference to Twitter, but I bet it will.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Have you ever seen "tow the line"?

There's another meaning for "blue moon" that the article doesn't even mention (though Wikipedia does), and that's "atmospheric conditions make the moon appear bluish." I'm inclined to prefer that meaning, if only because the colloquial phrase "once in a blue moon" meaning "really rarely" tends to be used to mean a lot more rarely than a calendrical blue moon, and also unpredictably, whereas calendrical blue moons are entirely predictable.