One post often leads to another. The recent article “Conventional Letter Salutations in English” garnered several questions about how to address a letter to a married couple who have different titles and/or different surnames. Traditional letter-writing etiquette is based on traditional professional and marital patterns derived from the following assumptions: 1. A married couple is … Read more
The little word fit has multiple functions and occurs in numerous expressions. In Middle English, the noun fit denoted an intense experience that could be painful, dangerous, or exciting. By the 16th century, a fit could denote a paroxysm, or the recurrent attack of an ailment. In the 17th century fit took on the meaning … Read more
In response to a recent post on idioms, a reader asked for a discussion of “the distinction between idioms and clichés.” In the article referenced, I gave four definitions of the word idiom. Here is the definition closest to the word cliché: idiom: a construction or usage peculiar to English. A cliché is an idiom … Read more
A common writing error is the use of loose in a context that calls for the verb lose. As a verb, loose means, “to set free; to release from restraint.” For example, “The Kaffirs loosed the dogs before seeing the elephants.” Lose, on the other hand, means “to become deprived of,” “to miss from one’s possession.” For … Read more
A reader sent me six phrases and asked how I would hyphenate them: 1. Anti money laundering laws 2. Non English speaking students 3. Ex editor in chief 4. Pre Anglo Saxon period 5. Pro self sustaining agenda 6. Post so called apocalypse 1. Anti money laundering laws A glance at legal and financial sites … Read more
An article in this morning’s newspaper contained the following Arabic words: bidoon djellabah Salafists Shiite Sunni “He was identified as a member of the country’s large stateless population known as bidoon.” 1. bidoon The word does not appear in either the OED or M-W. I found this definition in an article at PBS: Bidoon refers … Read more
The word Anglo, like English, derives from the Latin name for one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Britain after the Romans abandoned their colony there. The first documented use of the word Anglii is in a history of the German tribes by the Roman historian Tacitus (56-c.117 CE). The Angles were only one … Read more
A reader came across the following sentence in an online advertisement for a local homeschool conference: Enjoy a day chalk full of speakers and vendors while you are there! She speculated that the misspelling of chalk for chock could have been intentional, given the nature of the conference, but decided that it was just an … Read more
Thanks to a question from an ESL learner, I discovered the word paronym. Paronym The OED offers three definitions of paronym in the context of word types: 1. A word which is derived from another word or from a word with the same root, and having a related or similar meaning, (e.g. childhood and childish); … Read more
A British reader questions what he sees as a recent use of unbeknownst: Curious about the current (British/Irish English only?) replacement of ‘unknown to him’ by ‘unbeknown/unbeknownst to him’ (university students’ work attests to it in yoof-speak, and BBC documentaries to it in them elder lemons what should beknow better). Is this also creeping into … Read more
A person who is not able to speak to a caller at the time a call is placed, telephones the person who called at a later time. The phrase used to describe this exchange of phone calls is “to return a phone call.” This use of return is suitable in the context of telephoning, but … Read more
Narrowing the list to ten is difficult, but here are ten words beginning with the letters G and H that are frequently mixed up in speaking and/or writing. 1. gambit / gamut Perhaps it’s the first syllable that leads to confusion between these two nouns. In the game of chess, a gambit is an opening … Read more