eponym The person for whom something is named: chauvinism, Caesarian Section, boycott. exonym A name for a people used by outsiders and not by the people themselves. For example, English-speakers call the people of Wales the Welsh. autonym A name by which a people refers to itself. The name the Welsh people call themselves is … Read more
Among the meanings of the noun effect is this: Any of various distinct phenomena (originally in physical science, in later use also in other technical fields and in general contexts), frequently named after the discoverer or describer, or after something or someone providing an analogy or model. This kind of effect is always prefaced by … Read more
The first rule a child learns about the period (Br. “full stop”) is that it ends a sentence. Where else is this little dot used, and when is it omitted? Abbreviations Abbreviations may be written with or without periods. Whether or not to use a period with the abbreviations for honorifics, such as mister, miss, … Read more
Most of us are probably familiar with these -nym words: synonym a word that means the same as another word: little/small antonym a word that means the opposite of another word: little/big homonym a word that has the same sound as another word, but differs in meaning: horde/hoard acronym a word formed from the initials … Read more
Three rhetorical terms that describe a type of repetition are anaphora, epistrophe, and symploce. Anaphora is the repetition of a word or sequence of words at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences. Martin Luther King Jr. made frequent use of anaphora. In the “I Have a Dream” speech (August 1963), he began a … Read more
The origin of this expression lies in literary criticism. The term represents a contract between reader and writer. In recent years, however, the phrase has escaped from literary criticism and is used in a variety of contexts that have little to do with the original meaning. A web search brings up numerous examples in which … Read more
These three words have nothing to do with each other. They’re just interesting. Euerergetism The first time I encountered euerergetism may have been in an article about Boris Johnson before he was Britain’s prime minister. While Mayor of London, Johnson declared that Britain needed “a greater sense of eurergetism.” A classical scholar, he was familiar … Read more
Many of the AP Stylebook users who responded to the Grammar Day Twitter question (AP Quiz Top Two Anathemas ) complained about the usage of who and whom. For all practical purposes, the pronoun form whom is ready to go the way of ye, an old form of the pronoun you. Ideally, speakers who do … Read more
Traditional views about religion and sin may be in decline, but the human behavior catalogued as the Seven Deadly Sins remains very much with us. The sins and their synonyms provide writers with words to analyze and discuss the bad things people do. Here is the list as revised from earlier versions by Pope Gregory … Read more
Both these adjectives are in frequent use on the web: awkward: about 163,000,000 hits in a Google search untoward: about 5,290,000. Language, as the media illustrates daily, can be used to illuminate or obscure ideas. The purpose of adjectives is to make writing more vivid. Used judiciously, they can clarify ideas being presented. The vastness … Read more
Perhaps the quintessential American card game, poker gained its first popularity on the riverboats and in the saloons of the 19th century West. Based on a European card game that involved betting and bluffing, the game was called poque in French. “To place a stake or bet” was poquer. Words and phrases associated with the … Read more
Like the term political correctness, cancel culture has become an incantation to conjure with. conjure: To invoke by supernatural power, to effect by magic or jugglery. From Latin conjurare: to swear together, to band, combine, or make a compact by oath, to conspire. Before cancel culture, there was cancelling, in the sense of rejecting or … Read more