Words
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As read by Hugh Dennis on Radio 4! I caught the last episode over Christmas and it was funny, and available for 99p for my new kindle, so I bought The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth. Who also blogs over at The Inky Fool. It is a series of brief chapters on the origin of words in English, where…
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I love new words. Especially when I’ve been looking for them for a long time. For ages I been trying to think of a way to describe those little phrases and saying that seem harmless but are actually harmful. They’re often said without intent, but tend to provoke defensiveness when challenged. Lo and behold, someone…
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Under the category of things that I love is the Online Etymology Dictionary. It tells you where words come from and when they were first used. With words that have several senses, it lists when the word first acquired each meaning. I always have in mind that Bernard Cornwell said he tried to only use…
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I use the word ruthless quite a bit and the other day I was wondering whether there was such a word as ruth, so that one could be absent of it. In one of those marvellously serendipitous coincidences a couple of days later my dictionary.com Word of the Day was ‘ruth’. It means compassion or…
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Starting in the year I was born, Lake Superior State University has been compiling a list of words that should be banished from use. I feel there must be some sort of connection. The 35th annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness was published this year. There…
Boudica Marginalia 