The first thing I ever did in my life was crash a party. It was two days shy of my sister’s third birthday in 1985 and she was celebrating early with a party at McDonald’s when I expressed what I am now convinced is the earliest recorded symptom of histrionic personality disorder by insisting on entry into the world before she got to blow out her candles. I was born two days later
Dear Toast Readers, before this relationship we have goes further than you reading the title and my name, there’s something you have to know about me. It's very sad, and I want you to prepare yourself: It’s about my family. Look, it’s a tragic fact of biology- some genes just don’t mix right and you get conditions endemic to a whole set of otherwise nice people. In my family, however, it’s a little worse than…
The following phrases have been excerpted from an English to Latin textbook printed in the early 16th century (Auct. 2Q 5.9(4)), which has been digitized by the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford as part of an ongoing project. You can read the whole thing here or learn more about the project here. (You can also follow us on Twitter if you like the sound of #damagedmanuscriptThursday.) 1. Good morrowe. Good…
If you’ve ever seen people complain about singular “they” or so-called generic “he” (for the record, I am 100% for singular they and 100% against “he” as a default pronoun), or if you’re just really not so keen on gender binaries, you may have wondered what life and language would be like without gender pronouns. If you haven’t, well, you’re about to find out anyway. So put your linguist slippers on and
I'm not comfortable with the word 'transgendered'. That might potentially make you think I am a self-hating transgendered person, but that is not the case; I don't hate transgendered people at all, and I only hate myself some of the time for things completely unrelated to my condition. I just don't like using the word, because it's a word that comes with with a history and expectations and a sense of identity attached. When I…
From the woman who explained how the Benedict Cumberbatch name generator works, here is more than you ever dreamed of knowing about the grammatical mechanics of doge. You'll have to click to learn more, but it involves stuff like:
"A minimal doge utterance contains at least two but often three 2-word doge phrases, followed by a single-word doge phrase (most commonly wow). Additional phrases and variants can be added, especially for the sake
The Toast's [Nicole's] ongoing Benedict Cumberbatch coverage can be found here.
Bandicoot Cabbagepatch, Bandersnatch Cumberbund, and even Wimbledon Tennismatch: there seem to be endless variations on the name of Benedict Cumberbatch. In fact, even street signs have gotten into the action:
(image via)
But how is a normal internet citizen supposed to know, when they hear someone say “I just can’t stop looking at gifs of Bombadil Rivendell”
