collocations

A stunning silver or a shocking one?

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South Korea’s first medal of the 2026 Winter Olympics was won by snowboarder Kim Sang-kyum. This was headlined by the Korea Times as a ‘stunning silver’, but the article starts “Alpine snowboarder Kim Sang-kyum captured a shocking silver medal …”

I’m trying to decide whether I would ever describe a Good Thing as shocking. A shock silver medal, maybe, but not a shocking one. A silver medal may be shocking for a favourite who fell over doing a premature victory celebration.

Google Ngrams shows (a) stunning view(s), beauty, blow, success, effect(s), victory, example, noise and (a) shocking thing(s), news, spectacle, accident, manner, scene, state, sight, story. Whether these are Good Things or Bad Things may require more information. 

The results for shock include wave, syndrome and therapy, which are obviously very different.

(or, if you prefer/prescribe active voice: “Snowboarder Kim Sang-kyum won South Korea’s first medal of the 2026 Winter Olympics. The Korea Times headlined this as …”)

Elsewhere, the Times reports that enthusiasm for the Games is noticeably low among South Koreans. I’m not actively following, apart from occasionally glancing at headlines, even though Australia apparently has multiple medal chances.

Dancing with the czars

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A few days ago, an Australian news website stated that Trump’s border tsar was going to Minneapolis. Another stated that Trump’s ‘border czar’ was going to Minneapolis.

I am far more familiar with the spelling tsar, and would only ever use either to refer to eastern European monarchs (tsar for Russian and czar for south Slavic), not people holding positions of power in US politics or public life. 

Czar is the earlier spelling (from Latin caesar (classically pronounced with a /k/, compare German kaiser)) and was more used until about 1900. The two spellings traded usage for most of the 20th century, then tsar has been the most common since about 1990. If anything tsar refers to Russian monarchs (compare Russian Царь) and czar refers those people in US politics or public life. With the resources I have access to, I can’t find when when czar was first used in that way. US industrial magnates and the Russian monarchy overlapped by several decades (compare also ‘barons of industry’).

I have never knowingly encounteredczar in reference to Australia or any other country. (Wikipedia says US and UK.) The second website saw fit to use inverted commas around the phrase. I can’t immediately think what term we would use in Australia to refer to a person of equivalent power. Maybe, fortunately, we don’t have (m)any, as the Australian prime minister has less power to make such appointments. Intriguingly, most similar words come from other languages: boss (Dutch), supremo (Italian or Spanish), honcho (Japanese) and mogul (Persian or Arabic). ‘White House Border Czar’ seems to be Tom Homan’s actual title (Wikipedia, citing the Annual Report to Congress on White House Office Personnel, 1 July 2025). The first news source has a further article in which the commentator writes “The ‘White House Border Tsar’ (yes, that is his actual title)”. 

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bridled, unbridled, bristled, unbristled excitement

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I fell into a linguistic rabbit warren about the words bridled, unbridled, bristled and unbristled, by themselves and in conjunction with the word excitement (as an example). This post could get messy.

As sebmb1 pointed out in a comment to my previous post (un)bridled comes from a time when most people rode horses. There’s also saddled, with a different meaning, most often saddled with, and saddled and bridled (or bridled and saddled). Other agricultural words with similar meanings are hamstrung, hobbled, hog-tied, leashed and trammelled, all of which involve restraining animals. Leashed and trammelled have un- equivalents, but the others don’t. Sebmb1 also noted give a free rein (to) (not reign) and there’s also rein in, which no-one renders as reign in (or possibly rain in). There easily are more horsey/agricultural phrases and proverbs than words.

The only thing interesting about unbridled excitement is that its usage has increased greatly since about 1990, for no reason I can think of. The 1990s weren’t noted for unbridled excitement.

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“Cold wave peaks as temperatures plunge”

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Korea’s current “Cold wave peaks as temperatures plunge below minus 20 C in parts of country” (Korea Times, Fri 10 Jan)

Do cold waves peak, or do they trough? Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster don’t record trough as a verb. Oxford first records ‘To feed at or as at a trough’ (intransitive) and other meanings (if any) are behind a subscription. Cambridge first records ‘to eat something quickly and eagerly, especially in large amounts’ (transitive, with the example ‘She was sitting there troughing chocolate’, then, relevantly, ‘to reach a low level, price, etc. before going up again’, with the example ‘the economy’.

A Google search for “cold wave peaks” shows multiple results and for “cold wave troughs” two results, both of which use trough as a noun. I guess I’m going to have to put up with cold waves peaking. In Australia we get more heat waves that cold waves (nb not hot waves).

But I’m going to include “Cold wave troughs as temperatures plunge” so the next person to search will find something.

[22 Jan 2026: Dayslong cold wave reaches peak nationwide]

Try and fail

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I have used a computer keyboard pretty much every day for 30 years, when I first bought a home computer, and occasionally for about 4 years before that in a workplace office. I have developed a reasonable, non-specialist proficiency. (I had previously done one semester of typing at high school, but had forgotten most of that.) I rarely type at full speed for any extended time, because most of the typing I do is either editing a few words at a time (the arrow keys get more use than the letter keys – the right arrow key of my previous home laptop fell off), or writing work emails and personal blog posts, stopping to think about content and wording a lot.

I recently had the idea of doing a free online course followed by free online practice/speed tests. I have already discovered that my typing speed sits at about 55-60 words per minute, with bursts up to 75 wpm. I have a small problem with accuracy, which is not helped by autocorrect, which can be a good or bad thing. Pages for Mac also has autocomplete, which I don’t use because it requires stopping typing in the middle of a word and using the tab or return key, which is not a natural movement for me.

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travel videos, Little China, India Town and wee

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I have been watching various people’s travel videos of South Korea and various other countries, mostly in East and South-east Asia. One couple, whose names I have forgotten, visited Singapore and Malaysia. In Kuala Lumpur they explored Chinatown and Little India.

Why not Little China and India Town (or Indiatown)? 

An internet search shows that there are Little Chinas and India Towns. Note the movies Chinatown (1974) and Big Trouble in Little China (1986). Little China is also a “a politico-cultural ideology and phenomenon in which various Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese regimes identified themselves as the ‘Central State [中华, zhōng-huá]’ and regarded themselves to be legitimate successors to the Chinese civilization”, especially after the rise of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty (which I didn’t know). 

From what I found, India Towns (less often Indiatowns) tend to be supermarkets or restaurants rather than residential areas.

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The Easter Seal

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Some people say “Put Christ back in Christmas”, but it is is hard for Germanic-language speakers to say “Put Christ back in Easter” when we have adopted the name of a pagan goddess for this festival. Even those Greek and Latinate-language speakers (and English speakers attending Orthodox churches) who use pascha or a derivative of it don’t specifically refer to Jesus. No language (that I have found) uses any word related to Jesus or even resurrection as its usual and natural word.

I started wondering what the most common collocations with Easter are – whether we have been overrun by Easter bunnies and eggs. Not yet, but many collocations are non-religious. Google Ngram Viewer shows that the most common are Sunday, Island, Monday, Day, holidays, week, day, recess, Term and term. 

I am convinced that the correct term is Easter Day, but I seem to be on losing side of that. Easter Sunday has basically always been more common than Easter Day. Easter Week is Easter Day and the six days after (liturgically, we celebrate octaves, being the day and seven days after), though it is possible that some people use it to refer to Holy Week, being the seven days before. Easter Saturday is strictly speaking the Saturday after Easter Day, but most people mean and understand it as the day before, which I call Easter Eve (and refer to the Saturday after Easter). (I suspect that Good Friday will eventually become Easter Friday.) Note that Easter continues for 40 days, until Ascension Day.

Easter recess comes from the UK House of Parliament, and Easter T/term from UK law courts and public schools. So is usage different in the UK and USA? Google’s results for British English are Sunday, Island, Monday, holidays, Day, week, term, day, Term and recess (the same 10 words in a slightly different order) and those for American English are Sunday, Island, Monday, morning, Day, week, day, Seal, term and Term, which omits holidays and recess and adds morning and Seal, and has a slightly different order.

My readers in the USA may be surprised to learn that I had not encountered the Easter Seal before, and immediately imagined the pinniped version of the Easter Bunny. Ummm, no.

For my readers not in the USA Easter seals resemble postage stamps and are sold by the Easterseals charity in the USA and the Canadian Easter Seals charities for fundraising.

When I typed pascha above, Pages for Mac unhelpfully changed it to pasta. Paschal has maintained a more religious flavour (I won’t include its collocations) and Pascha is still basically Latin. Pasta is, of course, entirely culinary.

PS Tues 2nd: One of my nieces and her husband are members of an English-speaking Orthodox church. Even before my sister’s comment below, I messaged my niece to ask what they say. Her response was ‘Usually I just say Easter for both if it’s a non-church person, I think. Maybe specify “Orthodox Easter” or “I’m Orthodox and Easter for us is in 5 weeks…”. At church we usually distinguish “(western) Easter” and “Pascha”.’

heavy snow

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Today a year ago I walked a long way around various parts of central Seoul. Today Seoul was “pounded” by heavy snow (both the Korea Times and Korea Herald use that word). Does snow (even heavy snow) “pound”? If not, what does it do? I once encountered “dumping with snow” but we can’t really say “Heavy snow dumped Seoul” or “Seoul was dumped by heavy snow”. Readers in places which get heavy snow are especially invited to comment. For some reason we don’t have much use for snow-related collocations in Sydney.

Google Ngrams shows the usage of “snow pounded” has risen since 1980 and especially since 2000 (but is still a long way less common than any other combination of “snow *_VERB”.

PS Sun 31: I asked my Facebook friends and three replied.

[Minnesota] Here in the upper midwest USA, folks say “we got pounded with rain/snow”. Just means a lot of precip in a short time, often unexpected or exceeding the forecasted amount, or caught by surprise. Also often hear “we got dumped on”, but I’ve only heard that for snow, not rain.

[California] I’ve certainly come across the phrase, “pounded by snow” or “pounded by heavy rain”. It never seemed odd to me since it always referred to an event where the snow or rain in question was coming down hard and fast. We used to have a rooftop weather station that measured, among other things, rainfall amounts, and when the rain was really falling quickly it would say, “It’s raining cats and dogs”, of course, no actual animals were falling onto the house but that was the kind of situation under which the weather service would often use the term, “getting pounded”.

[Ontario] Where I live, you’re house will actually be pounded by the snow. The wind will drive it into the windows hard enough for them to thrum. And leave it splatted on the side of the house. Luckily that’s a once in a season storm…or lately, once in 4 seasons.

“outdoor skydiving”

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Facebook showed me a video of “outdoor skydiving”, which I thought was redundant until I remembered the activity commonly called indoor skydiving, then I thought it was merely strange. Surely skydiving involves the sky and diving, which indoor skydiving doesn’t. Wikipedia’s article for “outdoor skydiving” is titled “parachuting” (it is (just) possible to skydive without a parachute. About 10 years ago someone landed on a very large net. Do not try this at home … umm, you know what I mean) and the one for “indoor skydiving” is titled “vertical wind tunnel”.

Until very recently, no-one would ever have said or written “outdoor skydiving” – any skydiving was necessarily outdoors. Even now, skydiving is by default outdoors. This is an example of a retronym “a newer name for an existing thing that helps differentiate the original form from a more recent one. It is thus a word or phrase created to avoid confusion between older and newer types, whereas previously (before there were more than one type) no clarification was required”.

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