A reader has asked for a discussion of the verb degrade in the context of the latest fashionable phrase, “degrade and destroy.” It seems to be popping up everywhere. What would be a suitable replacement to mean, ‘attack until it is destroyed’? The phrase originated in the announcement that the US military plans to “degrade … Read more
The following prepositional errors all occur in a published mystery novel written by a native speaker of American English. 1. in / on Incorrect: His principles may land him in the gallows. Correct : His principles may land him on the gallows. A gallows is a frame for hanging. Examples of idiomatic usage: A friend … Read more
When I first encountered the word commoditization, I thought it was just an ugly synonym for commodification. I’ve discovered that–in American business parlance– commoditization is not at all synonymous with commodification. The Oxford English Dictionary has separate entries for both nouns, but assigns commoditization the same definition as commodification: the action of turning something into, … Read more
Sometimes writers are not sure about where to put commas in a list of adjectives. Compare: They visited a beautiful, elaborate mansion. They visited a beautiful Victorian mansion. The adjectives in the first sentence are separated by a comma because they are coordinate adjectives. They’re “coordinate” because they are equal in the way they describe … Read more
A reader has asked me to write about the word hoi polloi: I get so tired of intelligent people using this to mean the exact opposite. Hoi polloi is an English word that derives from a Greek phrase meaning “the many” or “the majority [of citizens].” Its English meaning is “the masses” or “the general … Read more
The third time I let the erroneous “principle parts” slip into a published post instead of the correct “principal parts,” I began to worry. Why would I continue to make this mistake even though I know perfectly well that the word spelled principle is used only as a noun and never as an adjective? Principal, … Read more