Pheneticizing and unfortunate pedantry

[lightcastle]

How to explain your research at a party.

Schott's Vocab (which I really should be reading more often), points out an alternative to "racial passing" - "pheneticizing", which was taken from this book review in Quill & Quire.

Compton argues that the term “racial passing” (a mixed-race person presenting as white) is often misused because it assumes racially ambiguous folks are always actively trying to be something they’re not. Instead, he suggests a new term – “pheneticizing” – that shifts the focus from the viewed to the viewer, and dispels the gross assumptions at work in attempts to slot Canada’s racial populations into easy binaries.

I am probably going to mine the pages of that blog for fun things in the future (especially since I don't have my own subscription to the OED.)

I mean, come on, he put up grimalkin just because it's neat.

In other english language news, the fine folks at take down another linguistic pedant in a review of Simon Heffer's new tome. (In related news, I might have to take up Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage.)