The Engine Room

So I haven't written anything here on The Engine Room since last summer. That's because I've been working on a new site, Cathedral City Guide.
Why? Well, I was keen to build something in WordPress; my day job had moved almost totally away from subbing; and I wanted a new challenge. Most of all, my partner and I had visited half a dozen of England's medieval cathedral cities and we felt that...

Unlikely as it sounds, I recently got involved in a drunken discussion on the difference between a tree, a bush and a plant.
I Googled 'tree' on my smartphone and one of the first definitions I came across was:
Something constructed in the form of, or considered as resembling, a tree, consisting of a stem, or stock, and branches; as, a genealogical tree....

The Engine Room didn't make it into bab.la and Lexiophiles' list of the 'Top 100 Language Blogs 2010', but if you voted for us then thank you.
Although the list is dominated by teaching and translation blogs (which usually hold no great interest for me), a few of my favourite blogs are present - including Fritinancy and Sentence first. Well done!...

This query has been emailed into The Engine Room:
Is there a word which means that a person's visual identity is unknown? For example, the West End Whingers are often referred to as "anonymous" as people don't know what they look like. However, they are not anonymous as they really are called Phil and...