Do you cringe when you ask someone “How are you?” and the person replies, “I’m good”? Why? Perhaps, like me, you are expecting the response to be “I’m well, thank you,” and the “I’m good” offends your expectations. However, if your complaint is that good is an adjective and well is an adverb, you’re on … Read more
The English word vulgar derives from the Latin word for “the common people”: vulgus. Before it took on the meanings of “unrefined, coarse, uncultured, refined, and ill-bred,” vulgar meant “belonging to the mass of people,” or “commonly used or known.” Nonjudgmental uses of vulgar For example, what historians now refer to as the Common Era … Read more
Words with the AE digraph (two letters written together to express one sound) are often misspelled by reversing the letters, for example, writing “Ceasar” for Caesar. Once I had a high school student who spelled his name Micheal. The first time he turned in a paper, I corrected his name. When I understood that it … Read more
A reader asks how a writer wishing to create “a redneck swagger” would rewrite the “regular English” sentence “You’re surprising to me.” He offers the following options: “Y’a surprisin’ t’a me.” “Y’ah surprisin’ t’ah me.” “Ya surprisin ta me.” “Yah surprisin tah me.” Note: You can find my thoughts on the use of the term … Read more
A reader encountering the expression “taken aback” looked it up in the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, where he found this example of usage: “I was a little taken aback at the directness of the question.” However, he also found “taken aback by” and “taken aback that” in other printed sources. He wants to know what … Read more