Yesterday, a headline in a prominent newspaper boldly proclaimed that the Saudi king was handing over the reigns while he was in the U.S. for treatment. Since a king only has one reign, and he holds it whether he’s in the U.S. or not, I thought at first maybe the writer was joking. But the [...]
Tag Archives: Words
Choose words that communicate
The author of one of my textbooks must be a friend of the magniloquent (see below) Conrad Black, or maybe a contributor to the harder levels of FreeRice.com! I say that because the text is sprinkled with so many obscure, unusual, “look how smart I am” kinds of words. Here, for your amusement or perhaps [...]
TTYL – I’m busy herding cats!
Fall is that exciting time of year (for word nerds) when The Oxford American Dictionary adds new words and phrases — this year, 2,000 of them! What’s not to like about the list? It includes abbreviations now recognized as words, like BFF (best friends forever), TTYL (talk to you later), LBD (little black dress) and [...]
More expressive language
I love reading the expressive ways other people have found to make a point. Here are my latest finds (the parts I particularly like are in bold): “I sometimes think of cancer as a long and difficult journey, a quest out of Tolkien, or a dark waltz.” – Dana Jennings, “With Cancer, Let’s Face It, [...]
Fun words v. 2
Here are some of the interesting and funny words I’ve run across recently. Most are from Buzzwhack and urbandictionary.com: Academic junk food: College courses with no value other than being an easy way to get an A. Anticipointment: The feeling you get when a product or event doesn’t live up to its own hype. Ghost [...]
105 words guarantees confusion
Ontario and British Columbia are getting a new Harmonized Sales Tax, or HST, on July 1. The HST replaces the Goods & Services Tax that I now charge, so this will affect me. So I signed up about a month ago to receive technical bulletins from the government that would tell me things I might [...]
Just don’t call it a battle
Tell me you do this, too — as you flip past the newspaper section containing obituaries, you can’t help but stop and read the ones accompanied by a photo of a young-looking person. Here’s why I do it. Having lost a few friends to cancer, I feel compelled to find out if that’s what ended [...]
Words matter
To wind up the work week and provide some amusement for word nerds, here are a few errors spotted recently in print or online, some of them in places where someone really should have known better/proofread: …wore a vile of her blood (vial) …balling her eyes out (bawling) …his behaviour won’t phase people at all [...]
Watch out for jargon 2
Among the many sports my family watched during the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics was one that vividly reminded me to watch out for jargon. I’m talking about curling. I’ve never curled, so I found the unfamiliar lingo quite confusing. The commentators talked about a runback double, draws and takeouts, a shot rock and a hammer, [...]
A day for word nerds
It’s National Grammar Day today. Read up on grammar myths, send an e-card, have fun with grammar and more with Grammar Girl Mignon Fogarty here. And be sure to go forth and write well!
