A small class of English words derived from the Latin suffixes -arius/-aria/-arium, meaning “connected with” or “pertaining to,” can be identified by the French descendant -aire. Here is a summary of those terms as used in English. The primarily British English term commissionaire refers to someone who performs commissions. (That word is used in the … Read more
When is it appropriate to abbreviate words? The answer to this question, as with many matters in writing, is not a simple one: It depends on type of content and the degree of the content’s formality. In technical publications and scholarly journals, abbreviation of statistical information or references to dimensions and durations abounds. Furthermore, the … Read more
A recent post discussed nouns employed to refer to ultimate achievement. Here, you’ll find details about adjectives that describe something that is the best, highest, or most important. Cardinal is from the Latin term cardinalis, meaning “essential” or “principal.” Chief, meaning “highest in authority” or “most important”—by way of the Anglo-French word chef, still used … Read more
Expressing oneself clearly and concisely in speech is a challenge because one has so little time to order one’s thoughts and choose one’s wording carefully, but writing is easily improved with even the briefest review. Always read over what you have written (whether it’s a tweet or a book manuscript) before you distribute or publish … Read more
Inserting additional information into a sentence without careful consideration of sentence organization can create barriers to comprehension, especially when the parenthesis is complicated. Here are several sentences in which complex parenthetical phrases are not treated with care, followed by discussion and revision. 1. Consumers have the right to speak out or complain, and to seek … Read more
A common stylistic fault is wordiness, using more words than necessary to express a simple thought. The following sentences contain often-heard expressions that contribute to a boring writing style. Edit the sentences to express them in fewer words. 1. As I finished reading the letter, I came to the realization that I had misinterpreted all … Read more
At least seven strategies for calling attention to one or more words exist, but few of them are appropriate for a document that one wishes to consider professional looking. The purposes and relative merits of various approaches are discussed below. 1. All-Caps Styling a word, phrase, or sentence entirely in uppercase letters has limited utility: … Read more
How does one express the greatest degree of success? Multiple optimal words are available to choose from. Several terms refer literally to mountaintops. Peak, perhaps an alteration of pike, meaning “a short point or spike,” refers figuratively to a high point one has reached among other achievements, just as a mountain peak is often one … Read more
The following is a list of idioms about ordinal numbers (first, second, and so on) and multiplicative numbers, or what the late English-usage expert Henry Watson Fowler called numeral adverbs (once, twice, and so on). (Because I have already devoted an entire post to idioms that include first, I’ve omitted them here.) 1. bottom of … Read more
A recent newspaper article about the world’s ugliest color reminded me that writers of both fiction and nonfiction can be misguided in describing colors. The article referred to a study in which researchers identified the ugliest color: opaque couché. This name (the official designation in the Pantone Matching System, a printing-industry codification of colors) is … Read more
What do the three nouns in this post’s title have in common? Yes, they all refer to questions or problems to be answered or solved, but there’s a more interesting commonality: Their very existence is a conundrum, puzzle, or quiz, because they have no etymological paper trail, and no one is quite certain how they … Read more
Here is a book certain to delight, enlighten, or annoy readers of language blogs like this one: How English Became English, Simon Horobin, OUP, 2016. Horobin, professor of English language and literature at the University of Oxford, has packed a huge amount of information into a 5×7 format of 175 pages, including bibliography and index. … Read more