Category: Definitions
Posted on Tuesday, September 8, 2015, at 10:34 am
Let’s talk about euphemisms, those soothing words meant to assure us that something’s not as bad as we know it is. A euphemism is a lullaby, a sedative, a velvet glove enfolding reality’s iron fist. In a way, the word euphemism is itself a euphemism—so much kinder and gentler than cop-out. Euphemisms are employed for …
Read MorePosted on Tuesday, August 18, 2015, at 8:39 pm
Is there a difference between comparing A to B and comparing A with B? The answer is yes, and it is a difference worth maintaining; but these days, compare to and compare with are in danger of becoming interchangeable. This looks like yet another fight that the grammar patrol is about to lose. When we …
Read MorePosted on Tuesday, August 11, 2015, at 10:15 am
Shakespeare typing Hamlet. JFK on a cellphone. Elvis using Twitter. Each is an anachronism, the technical term for a chronological blunder. Many years ago my family took me to see Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra. As young as I was, I gave up on the movie in utter disgust when Cleopatra winked at Caesar. I didn’t …
Read MorePosted on Tuesday, July 28, 2015, at 7:50 pm
A solid vocabulary gives you a hammer rather than a rock when you need to drive a nail. Today we introduce the first in a periodic series of vocabulary tests. We want to keep the focus on words that would be worthy of inclusion in any serious person’s vocabulary. We feel tests like these are …
Read MorePosted on Tuesday, July 7, 2015, at 4:05 pm
English verbs are either regular or irregular. We call a verb regular when we add ed (wanted, looked) or sometimes just d (created, loved) to form what are called the simple past tense and the past participle (see third and fourth paragraphs below). A regular verb’s simple past tense and past participle are always identical. …
Read MorePosted on Tuesday, May 12, 2015, at 9:57 pm
Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words by best-selling writer-editor Bill Bryson offers serious scholarship with a smooth, light touch. It’s a hard book to stop reading once you’ve opened it. We have a lot of other reference books in our offices, but the most recent of those came out in 1983. That was way back in …
Read MorePosted on Tuesday, April 21, 2015, at 10:13 am
Today we'll home in on three examples of the English language's capriciousness. Self-deprecating Few contemporary writers would hesitate to use self-deprecating to describe someone who is refreshingly humble. But the term's wide acceptance is yet another triumph of the slobs over the snobs. Technically, the correct term is self-depreciating. Although deprecate and depreciate appear almost identical, these words have different roots, and …
Read MorePosted on Tuesday, April 7, 2015, at 11:16 am
The long and winding big-league baseball season started this week. Every year at this time we profile a baseball immortal who is equally celebrated for his unorthodox language skills. The choice this year is Charles Dillon “Casey” Stengel (1890-1975), who at the age of fifty-eight became manager of the mighty New York Yankees and took …
Read MorePosted on Tuesday, March 24, 2015, at 7:18 am
Pronouncing words correctly helps convince listeners that you know what you’re talking about. By correct pronunciation, we mean words as you’d hear them enunciated at formal occasions: a lecture by an English scholar, say, or a first-rate production of a play by George Bernard Shaw or Eugene O’Neill. To settle pronunciation disputes, we recommend an …
Read MorePosted on Tuesday, February 3, 2015, at 3:45 pm
Here we are, in the month that’s hard to spell and harder to pronounce. Every year I grit my teeth listening to the bizarre ways people mangle “February.” The culprit is that first r. Most people just ignore it and say “Feb-yoo-ary.” The 2006 American Heritage dictionary has a “Usage Note” at “February” that made …
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