iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Nothing quite like a mischievous kitten to induce a good bit of swearing! And that’s a great favorite too.

Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

That’s really interesting, thanks for sharing! I did wonder about Russian, but I hadn’t looked into it on account of my total lack of Russian.

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Oooh this is so cool! I have a feeling I’ll be spending a lot of time on this site (also instant follow!).

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I think that’s a pretty safe bet 😆 I’d love to know how far back it goes. I can almost imagine my ancestors doing this with Proto-Germanic swear words, which I bet were brilliant too.

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Love this too! What a great band name. Might have to mine my metalhead husband’s copy of All Known Metal Bands for some more examples!

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Finnish has entered the chat! This is brilliant, thank you so much. Love these examples! (Also super interesting re prosody - I’m thinking phonology takes centre stage in English tmesis too).

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Great tip, thanks! It’s a tricky thing to search simply because it’s so productive (in English at least) and you can insert an intensifier into any number of words and phrases. I’m having so much fun with it!

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Those disease-based profane intensifiers are wild and I didn’t know they were used this way too (I’m clearly keeping entirely the wrong company here). Adding to the list, thank you!

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I feel like the paper needs at least one sweary limerick, thanks! And I love ‘bally’ - think I might adopt that one myself.

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

That’s so true! Australians take the top spot when it comes to shortening things, and especially coming up with nicknames. Love the examples, thanks!

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Great find! And what a delightful article too. Frugly the canine vocalist!

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It might work if the one you’re inserting into is long enough and has the right stress. For example: mothergoddamnfucker. The key is the word being inserted needs to be followed by a stressed syllable, and ideally needs to be two syllables itself. Cool eh?

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

How fab are they?! Thank you, I’ll be diving into this one next.

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It is truly phenomenal - it can function almost anywhere in some form: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and can even combine with itself in a phrase. Pretty cool!

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

It really does, thank you! And I definitely will! It’s fascinating how much there is to say about this.

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

So cool, thanks you! I need to make a playlist, I bet there are loads of examples…

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Same for Dutch, pretty much - loan swear words are really common. Interestingly, Afrikaans has quite a few examples in Afrikaans, but the phenomenon is most likely borrowed from English.

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Could be, thanks! *adds to reading list* I’m working on formalizing it in generative grammar and functional discourse grammar.

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

That’s excellent! Thanks for sharing!

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

That’s such a good question! It does happen with other swear words and euphemisms too (think Ned Flanders and his fandiddlytastic), but the f-word certainly has a special kind of flexibility, perhaps even grammaticalizing!

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

OMG thanks Gretchen! I’ve been reading your articles on this, fanbloodytastic!

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Sounds plausible to me, the internet etymology overlords reckon it’s only been around since 1995, which seems way too recent. (There’s a great book called Kitchen Table Lingo btw, full of the words families make up for things!)

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Oooh I love that, thank you! I’ve also noted Barney’s ‘…wait for it…’ construction in How I Met Your Mother, it shares a lot in common with expletive insertion imo!

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I’m absofuckinglutely thrilled to be writing a paper on what’s happening syntactically when we shove a swear word into the middle of a perfectly whole other word (aka tmesis). I’m also intrigued about whether (and how) this happens in other languages. Have you got any examples? #linguistics

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Reposted by Lucy Goodchild

Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Dolly Parton's Imagination Library gifted more than 332,000,000 books since it was first created 31 years ago.

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Reposted by Lucy Goodchild

Edward Cowling @edcowling.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

“This must be Thursday,' said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. 'I never could get the hang of Thursdays.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

My new office setup. Not an LLM in sight. There’s magic in the mechanics of this typewriter, in the physicality of typing on it. Writing feels like crafting again. (Full disclosure: my other desk has a laptop on it. I can’t escape reality that fully.) #typewriter #writing #writer #author

A black and white photo of a typewriter, library lamp and vintage desktop pencil sharpener on a desk with a shell patterned top.

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Reposted by Lucy Goodchild

Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

To accompany all those Bluesky science/academia #starterpacks, how about we also share introductions to the literature of our different fields. I present here a handy guide to main types of papers in the language sciences (inspired by the amazing @xkcd.com). #language #linguistics #science #academia

Comic depictions of the first page of research papers in the language sciences, with titles that include the following:
Just what the hell is a word anyway?
See how this single cognitive process or brain area or neural oscillation or gene explains language!
Based on the shapes of these old bones, Homo erectus could sing .... don't @ me.
A baby looked at one thing more than the other, now we know the secret to grammar.
If you think about it, every language is fundamentally the same, amirite?
We taught a load of undergrads a made-up language, lol.
On the staggering diversity of the many languages across the world.
Remember the thing you said only humans could do, here's a video of a monkey / dolphin / corvid / octopus / honeybee doing it.
I trained this AI with 80 billion tweets and it became head-writer for phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 07/03/2026

This is my favourite Dutch invention 🐠

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

‘Stationery’ is my pick for #FavouriteWordFriday. 🤓 A few centuries ago, people like Shakespeare would head to ‘stationers’ to buy their writing equipment - sellers with a static, or ‘stationary’, shop, unlike the peddlers who were mobile. Hence ‘stationery’. What’s your word of the week?

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Absolutely brilliant book! I also love The Meaning of Liff. And basically everything else he wrote.

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

My oncology nurse just sent me photos of my tumour (she’s called Carol. The tumour, not the nurse). I had requested them, which apparently isn’t a common occurrence. 😅 Now deciding what to do with them… collage? Moody black-and-white print? Sculpture? Endless possibilities.

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Yay, hi! 🤗 Still figuring things out here, but it seems infinitely more pleasant than the alternative.

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Lucy Goodchild @lucygoodchild.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Happy World Book Day to everyone in the UK and Ireland! (The rest of us will have to wait until 23 April, UNESCO World Book and Copyright Day. It’s inconvenient timing for UK schools, so they made a new one.) I’m skilling up in celebration. #WorldBookDay #Reading #Books

A hand holding a copy of How to Read a Book: the classic guide to intelligent reading by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles van Doren, in front of pink shelves full of books.

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