Anne Curzan
Contributor, That's What They SayAnne Curzan is the Geneva Smitherman Collegiate Professor of English and an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor at the University of Michigan. She also holds faculty appointments in the Department of Linguistics and the School of Education.
As an expert in the history of the English language, Anne describes herself as a fount of random linguistic information about how English works and how it got to be that way. She received the University's Henry Russel Award for outstanding research and teaching in 2007, as well as the Faculty Recognition Award in 2009 and the 2012 John Dewey Award for undergraduate teaching.
Anne has published multiple books and dozens of articles on the history of the English language (from medieval to modern), language and gender, and pedagogy. Her newest book is Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History (2014). She has also created three audio/video courses for The Great Courses, including "The Secret Life of Words" and "English Grammar Boot Camp."
When she is not tracking down new slang or other changes in the language, Anne can be found running around Ann Arbor, swimming in pools both indoor and out, and now doing yoga (in hopes that she can keep running for a few more years to come).
-
You’re probably familiar with the phrase “batten down the hatches,” especially if you’ve ever turned on the Weather Channel before a major storm. A… -
Last week on That's What They Say, we talked about a peeve over "exasperate" getting used in place of "exacerbate." This week, we looked at two more words…
-
Some words sound similar but don't have anything to do with each other. Others sound similar and have everything to do with each other. When a listener…
-
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s election, we found ourselves wondering about the history of “aftermath.”A listener named Sybil Kolon put "aftermath" on our…
-
Our clocks fell back by an hour Sunday morning. As they did, a much-discussed usage issue once again raised its head.Though most of us would agree the…
-
When it’s “all downhill from here,” there’s some ambiguity about whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.A friend of Professor Anne Curzan recently…
-
Sometimes we get a language question that leads to another question. That question leads to another question, and before we know it, we’ve fallen down a…
-
Currying favor has everything to do with flattery and horses, and nothing to do with food.This expression, which means to seek or gain favor through…
-
Most people would agree that a lamb would make a terrible escape vehicle. All that bleating would instantly give away even the stealthiest of…
-
We get a lot of questions about words that have two pronunciations. This week, we decided to look at two of those words: status and mischievous.When it…
