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Failsonry explained.
Failsonry?
This word appears to exist only in Josh Marshall’s tweet and subsequent retweets. What’s it mean?
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The American Dialect Society has picked its word of the year.
More bad words
The Washington Post reports that the Centers for Disease Control is not alone in cuts to vocabulary.
The seven words you can’t write at the CDC
Forbidden words: “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”
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Oxford Dictionaries announces its word of the year.
At the Manor
From an Alice Munro story.
M-W sentence challenge
“In the name of federalism, show some empathy, or at least some syzygy, you complicit gaffe-prone dotard,” the hurricane warned, “before I turn you into a gyro platter and recuse myself!”
Words of the year
Several picks.
New AHD entries
Burner, saltimbocca, GOAT: among the additions this year to the American Heritage Dictionary.
Word of the day: wrangler
At many a performance of The Nutcracker, the volunteering parents who manage the young dancers backstage.
Word of the day: sledgehammer
Walking through the hardware store, I wondered: why sledgehammer? Does it have something to do with sledding? A mighty hammer used to free a sled stuck in ice? No.
Dry goods, &c.
What are dry goods anyway?
More blizzardous
I went looking for John Ashbery’s word “blizzardous” in Google Books and found an 1888 column by one J. Ashby-Sterry.
Kafkaesque
Trending at Merriam-Webster.
Misused word of the day: refute
Pay attention to the news for a while, and you’ll notice the word misused.
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Stornography, now appearing in a cartoon.
Stornography
The commodification of horrific weather into televised spectacle.
Lash tab
Elaine and I were getting coffee in the library when I wondered about the patch on her backpack.
Words, can’t stand ’em
Fresca at l’astronave has written a post about words she can’t stand.
Word of the day: zaatar
“In Middle Eastern cuisine: a condiment made from any of these herbs (esp. thyme) singly or in combination, with dried sumac, toasted sesame seeds and salt.”
“Zillions”
A fine episode of Helen Zaltzman’s podcast The Allusionist, about hyperbolic indefinite numerals.
A good skate
I had to look it up.
Some prepositions
“Can we move on off of that?”
Word of the night: owl-hoot
The earliest meaning, now archaic and rare: “dusk, nightfall.”
Workplace expression of the day
Hard stick : used in the world of medicine.
On hope
Imagine a chair or dean, after a meeting has ended, asking for a private word with a faculty member who suspects plagiarism in the work of some favored student: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Biff go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”
Zippy bangles
“Stretchable diamond bangles.”
Iambic beer?
For the splittest of seconds, I misread a word in the definition for “Kriek,” the Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Day.
A real nut job
I found this defenseless creature online and combed its tail forward.