Tag Archives: words
Update needed
I had long been puzzled by how many people don’t get the saying “That’s the exception that proves the rule.” This morning it occurred to me that the opacity is not in the minds of my friends but in the phrase’s … Continue reading
Ricotta / Ree-goat
In Fairport, New York, where I grew up, there were lots of Italian American families, and I had many Italian American friends (still do). I married an Italian American from Liverpool, New York, and have a son from this marriage … Continue reading
Accent-removal class
Notes Mark Liberman at Language Log: “In a better world, the speakers of the ‘standard’ variety would take a prejudice elimination class instead.”
Damned, lying lawyers
On Twitter recently I noted that, oddly enough, no word rhymes with doggerel. My friend Jonathan Mayhew tweeted back, “pettifogger hell, though it would rime with doggerel only in doggerel.” I had never even heard the word “pettifogger” before, so … Continue reading
The Art of Scolding, cont’d.
“We have somehow not successfully received your professional-development documentation,” a Dean’s Office colleague wrote me in an email early in my career at Kwantlen. The sentence both charmed and alarmed me, especially the phrase somehow not successfully received, which seemed … Continue reading
On National Grammar Day: A love letter to language
It’s fitting that I should write this post on National Grammar Day. Choosing and arranging the right words with the right endings in the right order with the right punctuation isn’t even close to the most interesting thing I could … Continue reading
