Sometimes you just need a hyphen. You really do. Here’s proof: He was a big-city worker, a cold-case officer with slicked-back hair. is very different from He was a big city worker, a cold case officer with slicked back hair. In the first case we have an urbanite with a sleek coiffure who works on cold […]
It’s April, it’s gorgeous out, and I suddenly have oodles of time on my hands. Outside of my usual work, I spent a lot of March copyediting a good friend’s fascinating manuscript (what will be her first published book!). And my next publishing course, Publishing in the Electronic Age, doesn’t begin for a whole month. […]
Vest-Pocket Vocabulary Vi’atecture, n. the art of making roads, canals, &c. Word in the Wild: Although the tour guide kept directing everyone’s attention to the architecture of Amsterdam, Julia, an urban geographer, found the viatecture far more interesting. You can find a complete listing of the Word Blog’s Vest-Pocket Vocabulary entries and learn more […]
Vest-Pocket Vocabulary Unilit’eral, n. composed of a single letter. Word in the Wild: Look here, mister. Uniliteral words are not permitted in Scrabble. And anyway, the letter k is not a word. You can find a complete listing of the Word Blog’s Vest-Pocket Vocabulary entries and learn more about where they come from here.
Guest Post Today’s guest post is brought to you by Stephanie. You can find her over at theoldyoungadult.blogspot.com. This is her first flowchart. Be nice. Have you ever been frustrated by the lack of proper spelling and grammar on the Internet? It is a dangerous, scary world out there. Venture away from the Word Blog for […]
Vest-Pocket Vocabulary Tri’alogue, n. conversation of three persons. Word in the Wild: “Larry! Moe! Get over here. I need to talk to you about the trialogue for our next picture. Nyuk! Nyuk!” Warning: Be careful not to mistake this word with try a log or trial ogg. Special care is needed when engaging in a […]
Guest Post Nope, this isn’t a rant that will happen biweekly (whenever that is), but a guest post on the word biweekly from the inimitable Anna. Biweekly, along with its equally annoying word companions bimonthly and biannually, are some of the more frustrating and functionally useless words in the English language. Neither common usage nor […]
Vest-Pocket Vocabulary Sorn’er, n. one who sponges on others. Word in the Wild: My brother has become known as a sorner among his friends, sleeping on their sofas, eating all their food, using up their shampoo, and running up their hydro bills, but he prefers to think of himself as an urban nomad. This term […]
Guest Post This post was contributed by Martin French. Ever since William Gibson described cyberspace as a “consensual hallucination,” a “graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system,” it has been possible to imagine that the internet produces an otherworldly space. So, for example, when I type the […]
Vest-Pocket Vocabulary Refos’sion, n. the act of digging up. Word in the Wild: My dog’s favourite activities are eating, sleeping, and refossion. According to the OED, refossion more specifically means to dig up a second or subsequent time, which makes sense given the re- at the start of the word. You might also have noticed […]