A reader wonders if the verbs rung, sung, hung, stunk and “their ilk” can ever be used without a helping verb. For example, is it possible to say “He sung tenor with the choir”? It’s possible, but speakers who do so may find themselves the target of such comments as these: Yes, there are still … Read more
Because I’m in the habit of blithely flinging the word idiom about as if everyone should know what I mean by it, this comment from a reader brought me up short: I guess I don’t know what an idiom is. The word idiom derives from a Greek word meaning “appropriate to oneself.” In the context … Read more
The phrase “brave new world” is popular in headlines used to introduce a variety of topics: High School Basketball: Brave new world in regionals The Brave New World of Ferraris in China The Brave New World of Food Oldman’s Brave New World of Wine Why We Need To Talk Now About The Brave New World Of … Read more
A reader wants to know how between and in between differ in usage: Please explain the usage of the term “in between.” It’s been many years since I heard anyone say this. I always thought it was unnecessary to combine the words “in” and “between”. What’s the difference if you say that one thing is … Read more
A reader questions the media’s use of injury and wound as if they were interchangeable: I had always thought that “to wound” describes the deliberate infliction of an injury, while the injury itself could be the result of an accident. If this is still the case, could you address the confusion. In modern usage, the … Read more
A reader has asked for a post about the confusion between pedaling and peddling. The only errors I found related to the use of two idioms: “influence peddling” and “go pedal your papers”: Incorrect: All I had to do was get close to the power brokers in these foreign countries and report on any influence pedalling without … Read more
I read this in a mystery novel: A trapped cat would fight its cage until it tore off hanks of its own skin. I can imagine that a cat might tear off strips or chunks or even hunks of skin, but not “hanks of skin.” The word hank refers to something long and flexible like … Read more
Ancient Egyptians had hieroglyphics. Modern Man has emojis. Since the 1980s, symbols to express emotions have proliferated in cyberspace. At first they were made with what was available on the keyboard, like the smiley face made with a colon, a hyphen, and a parenthesis. Now, thanks to Unicode, they appear as true pictures: faces, hands, … Read more
The review post about “there is” and “there are” triggered so many comments about the word bunch that I decided to give the word a post of its own. Here’s the sentence that provoked the discussion: In his arms there are a whole bunch of corn husks. Some readers defended the plural verb, suggesting that … Read more
All writers strew less-than-perfect turns of phrase in their first drafts, unnecessary words and phrases that slow down writing. Here are five stylistic flaws that can be eliminated in revision. 1. Unnecessary prepositional phrases EXAMPLE: After all my hard work, the superintendent’s compliment was gratifying to me. BETTER: After all my hard work, the superintendent’s … Read more
An ESL reader has a question about the expression “tit for tat”: If Tit is something we all commonly understand then is Tat the male counterpart of Tit? What does Tit and Tat mean in this idiom? The impulse to attach a gendered meaning to the words in this idiom illustrates how folk etymologies are … Read more
Metonymy [meh-TAHN-uh-mee] is a figure of speech that substitutes a word or phrase that stands for an object, action, institution or the like for the object itself. For example, in the phrase “surf and turf”— in the context of restaurant fare—surf is a metonymy for seafood and turf is a metonymy for beef. In a … Read more