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Master Your Vocabulary
…Or your vocabulary will become your master. Or summat like that, I dunno. Seems as though Aron was terribly, mysteriously ahead of the curve when he called out our current crop of politicians for their overuse of The Sphinx’s favorite rhetorical device. Slate has put a name to the tactic (it’s called antimetabole, apparently). And…
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Lets All Point And Laugh At The People Who Dont’ Know How To Apostrophize Or “Quote”
Before I begin, I should admit to a bit of personal Grammar Naziism; that is to say, I generally have little tolerance for people who don’t take the time to learn to use proper punctuation, spelling and grammar and thus inflict linguistic atrocities upon those of us that do care about such matters. Thus it…
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“SAT Words”
I used to be regularly derided by friends and acquaintances of all stripe for my use of “SAT words”, generally defined as words that do not see regular use in the populace at large and thus achieve a “nerdy” gloss. In fact, so distinct is my proclivity towards these sorts of words that they were…
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Fun With Indefinite Pronouns
We (mistakenly) received this envelope in the mail yesterday. Who can spot the problem? Hint: The text reads “Your FREE address labels are enclosed. Please honor America’s paralyzed vets by using them.” (Extra hint: I thought we already did this at Walter Reed!)
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Am I The Only One Affected By The Effects Of Grammar?
A colleague was drafting a memo to send out company-wide today and forwarded it to me for review. The copy was mostly good, although he referenced several “servers that will be effected by ongoing work” or somesuch. I replied that, while the memo itself was good, I had a grammatical bone to pick: the servers…
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A Very Good, Very Geeky Question
Jeff Harrell asks an interesting question: what is the proper plural form of “MacBook Pro”? Is it like “attorneys general”, as in “MacBooks Pro”, or is the far more pedestrian “MacBook Pros”? The world, sadly, may never kn… wait, it’s already been asked, and answered? Ahhh, the Internet.
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Sniglets: Words That Should Be In The Dictionary, But Aren’t
Now this is cool: sniglets is the overarching term that has been adopted for words that ought to be in the dictionary yet aren’t, such as: “Aqualibrium (ak wa lib’ re um) – n. The point where the stream of drinking fountain water is at its perfect height, thus relieving the drinker from (a) having…
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An Explanation For YSSWotD
I began the Your Scottish Slang Word O’ The Day series a month ago primarily as an exercise in motivating myself to blog daily with the potentially beneficial side effect of amusing [all?] my reader[s?] out there. I believe that it has been a resounding success, at least insofar as it has gotten me to…
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Your
Scottish SlangScots Word O’ The Day: EejitTwenty-seventh in a series eejit (ee·jit) Dialect, chiefly Scot. ~n. 1. idiot, simpleton, one not possessed of all their mental faculties; one who is unable to properly conduct their own affairs (as in “Yer aff yer heid, ye eejit. That’s no’ a real dug“) [see also bawheid, dunderheid]
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Your
Scottish SlangScots Word O’ The Day: FouterTwenty-sixth in a series fouter (foo·tir) Dialect, chiefly Scot. 1. ~n. one who muddles through; aimless, exasperating person (“Yer a fouter, gie it tae me, ah’ll dae it!“). 2. ~v. a fiddly, troublesome task or job (“This is a right fouter, this“) ~adv. foutering (“Yer foutering aboot! Stope it!“) [Similar to gitter].