Procrastination Station You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting quite as often the last little while. It has been awfully busy in WordBlogland the past couple of months, but I suspect there may have been a teensy bit of procrastination involved, too. So to give you something to hold you over until my […]
Vest-Pocket Vocabulary Insci’ence, n. an ignorant state. Word in the Wild: “Don’t keep me in inscience, Monty! I’m dying to know what’s behind curtain number three!” You can find a complete listing of the Word Blog’s Vest-Pocket Vocabulary entries and learn more about where they come from here.
Art for Word Lovers The Ideal Bookshelf is an ongoing project by artist Jane Mount. She says, “We show off our books on shelves like merit badges (the ones not on our Kindle, at least), because we’re proud of the ideas we’ve ingested to make us who we are, as we should be. The spine […]
Vest-Pocket Vocabulary Heb’etate, v. to dull; to stupefy. Word in the Wild: Heather always found that a giant portion of mac and cheese did more to hebetate than fortify her. Yet for some reason she always went back for seconds anyway. You can find a complete listing of the Word Blog’s Vest-Pocket Vocabulary entries and […]
Lexical Vexations Today’s post was requested by reader Elaine, who writes, “Please add ‘Then vs Than.’ Then refers to a time element; than is used in a comparative sense.” As you can see Elaine has a lockdown on this tricky pair, but she’s picked a perfect lexical vexation. These words refer to pretty abstract ideas […]
Lexical Vexations ordinance n. a municipal regulation. ordnance n. military supplies, esp. artillery Word in the Wild: If you’re researching your next move and the city’s website keeps mentioning various municipal ordnances, you may want to consider moving somewhere a little safer. Perhaps a municipality with an ordinance against the use of heavy artillery? Still vexed? You […]
Vest-Pocket Vocabulary Glose, v. to flatter. Word in the Wild: Ruby was always amazed at her son’s ability to suddenly glose and fawn whenever he found himself needing the car. This Vest-Pocket word, also spelled gloze, has been around since the 13oos, but it’s only rarely used now. You’ll sometimes find it used in the phrase “glose […]
Please welcome to the stage the high priestess of romance, the one-of-a-kind Vicki Essex! The news came out this week that one of my good buddies is now a bona fide published romance novelist. I’m super proud of her and exhort you to visit her blog, www.VickiEssex.com, check out her Facebook fan page, and follow […]
Lexical Vexations eek interj. an expression of fright or surprise. eke v. to extract with great toil; often used in the phrase eke out. Words in the Wild: Sharon opened her latest credit card statement with trepidation, and when she saw the balance due let out a shrill “Eek!” Here she’d been trying so hard […]
Vest-Pocket Vocabulary This Vest-Pocket word can be used literally to denote billowing ashes and smoke or figuratively to suggest something veiled by an obscuring and murky haze. Fuli’ginous, a. smoky; sooty. Word in the Wild: The plume issuing from Gunung Pinatubo struck Saraswati as being rather ominous, so she decided to review her findings in […]