Word of the day: omnibus
A word, a television show.
Word of the day: iridescent
“Iridescent” brings to my mind two bits of poetry.
From Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day
Concerning “qua.”
The word of the day: quaquaversal
A real word, from the OED.
1 PUN MULTI
A pen and some puns.
William Deresiewicz on heroes
“Perhaps no word in public life of late has been more thoroughly debased by overuse.”
David Marsh on the subjunctive
At The Guardian, with a nod to Orange Crate Art.
Word of the day: pupil
Like any unexamined word suddenly examined, it looks a bit odd.
Word of the day: skeuomorph
Handy word in the digital world.
Word of the day: earthling
Much older than I thought.
“I changed the Will to Shall”
Pete Seeger, on the development of “We Shall Overcome.”
Were and was
An update to one of the most popular posts on Orange Crate Art.
Murdoch’s issues
“Murdoch’s phrasing places blame not on individual agents but on difficulties and problems that were somehow in the air. It’s like a driver blaming issues with alcohol for the damage to his car.”
Clothes, information, suds, pants
Nouns, invariably plural, invariably singular.
Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day
Re: process : The phrase “in the process of” never adds anything to the sentence in which it appears. You can safely omit it and thereby tig...
Kozol on jargon
Educational jargon: “a peculiar tendency to use a polysyllabic synonym for almost any plain and ordinary word.”
The Banned List
From John Rentoul of The Independent, a list of one hundred words and phrases to avoid: The Banned List.
Leonard Stern (1922–2011)
Honeymooners writer and creator of Mad Libs
Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, complete
Ninety years in the making, the 21-volume, 28,000-word Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is complete.
The OED’s first-place verb
It’s “run.”
Blues idiom of the day: dust one’s broom
From Stephen Calt’s Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary
Unusual idiom of the day
“I don’t want to burden you out.”
First messy of 2011
Michiko Kakutani, using the word “messy” in a book review (again).
That said
A modest suggestion to improve early-twenty-first-century discourse: remove “that said” from the starts of sentences.
Getting my ducks in a row
“Lord love a duck”: it’s everywhere.
Word of the day: subitize
“To perceive, without counting, the number of objects in a small group.”
Word of the day: jalousie
It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day.
“Doris Day parking”
Any parking spot that seems as though it was meant to be
Phooey, a caption
The first recorded appearance of “phooey” as applied to the New Yorker Caption Contest
The lunatic fringe again
“Lunatic fringe” first referred to hair.