RSS

M.Leddy + words   294

Domestic comedy
“Did I ever tell you about the etymology of apple?”
domesticcomedy  words 
8 days ago by M.Leddy
An Old-Fashioned retronym?
Is the name Old-Fashioned a retronym, created after other cocktails came along?
words 
8 days ago by M.Leddy
Eponym of the day: satyr
The Greeks have nearly swept A.Word.A.Day’s week of eponyms.
Greek  names  words 
20 days ago by M.Leddy
Eponym of the day: hector
“Hector is a brave and dutiful character, but unfortunately his name is now sullied in the language.”
Greek  Homer  Iliad  names  words 
20 days ago by M.Leddy
A week of eponyms
From A.Word.A.Day
Greek  names  words 
24 days ago by M.Leddy
“They mess you up”
For the first time in a long time, the word “mess” has appeared in a Michiko Kakutani book review.
words  writing 
6 weeks ago by M.Leddy
To v. through
Parking tickets and usage.
words 
6 weeks ago by M.Leddy
Regency-era slang
“Having just typed eh wot? in a comment, I felt compelled to look and learn a little more.”
language  slang  words 
8 weeks ago by M.Leddy
Word of the day: wirra
Oh, wirra, wirra, wirra.
words 
10 weeks ago by M.Leddy
On retronyms
Bryan Garner: ”When roller skates were invented in the 19th century, it became necessary to refer to the kind used on ice — originally just ‘skates’ — as ‘ice skates.’”
words 
12 weeks ago by M.Leddy
Batshit crazy
Recent developments in American political life have made me curious about the expression “batshit crazy.”
politics  words 
12 weeks ago by M.Leddy
Abby and Austin
Dear Abby and J.L. Austin on promises.
philosophy  words 
february 2012 by M.Leddy
Definitive Jest
Jarett Myskiw’s Definitive Jest: “a vocabulary-building and SNOOT-approved word-of-the-day blog centered around David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.”
DavidFosterWallace  words 
january 2012 by M.Leddy
“Rain umbrella”
As opposed to . . . ?
redundancy  words 
january 2012 by M.Leddy
“Evening after evening, weekend after weekend, holiday after holiday”
Writing down pronunciations, for forty-three years.
dictionaries  words 
january 2012 by M.Leddy
Word of the day: kudos
Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day.
Greek  words 
january 2012 by M.Leddy
The name of the year
Do you say “twenty-” or ”two thousand”?
time  words 
january 2012 by M.Leddy
Dead give-away
Why a *dead* give-away?
words 
january 2012 by M.Leddy
Recreational and recreative reading
I remember some years ago hearing of a college administrator who characterized English studies as “recreative reading.” It seems appropriate that he chose the needless variant.
reading  usage  words 
january 2012 by M.Leddy
Longuyland
Are you from Longuyland?
NewYork  words 
december 2011 by M.Leddy
Review: The Wage Slave’s Glossary
“A grand and saddening tour of language past and present.”
words  work 
december 2011 by M.Leddy
Eleven, eleven, eleven
Is “eleven” one of the “teens”?
words 
november 2011 by M.Leddy
-wise-wise
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary and the suffix -wise.
dictionaries  words 
november 2011 by M.Leddy
Close-reading Herman Cain
“The charge that Herman Cain sexually harassed two women when he headed the National Restaurant Association may indeed be false. But the candidate’s responses merit close reading.”
politics  words 
november 2011 by M.Leddy
Word of the day: foo fighter
The Oxford English Dictionary word of the day.
comics  words 
november 2011 by M.Leddy
Cambric, chambray
Any relation?
words 
october 2011 by M.Leddy
Overheard
“Opinion-wise.”
overheard  words 
october 2011 by M.Leddy
Three little words
“Outgrow China.”
politics  words 
october 2011 by M.Leddy
“My children were raised”
I am happy to learn that the verb “raised” in “Heroes and Villains” is okay by Bryan Garner.
BryanGarner  music  VanDykeParks  words 
october 2011 by M.Leddy
Word of the day: non-trending
That is, “of permanent interest.”
words 
october 2011 by M.Leddy
Word of the day: omnibus
A word, a television show.
television  words 
september 2011 by M.Leddy
Word of the day: iridescent
“Iridescent” brings to my mind two bits of poetry.
MarianneMoore  poetry  Sappho  words 
september 2011 by M.Leddy
From Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day
Concerning “qua.”
usage  words 
september 2011 by M.Leddy
The word of the day: quaquaversal
A real word, from the OED.
OED  words 
august 2011 by M.Leddy
1 PUN MULTI
A pen and some puns.
pens  puns  words 
august 2011 by M.Leddy
William Deresiewicz on heroes
“Perhaps no word in public life of late has been more thoroughly debased by overuse.”
culture  words 
august 2011 by M.Leddy
David Marsh on the subjunctive
At The Guardian, with a nod to Orange Crate Art.
usage  words 
august 2011 by M.Leddy
Word of the day: pupil
Like any unexamined word suddenly examined, it looks a bit odd.
words 
august 2011 by M.Leddy
Word of the day: skeuomorph
Handy word in the digital world.
words 
july 2011 by M.Leddy
Word of the day: earthling
Much older than I thought.
words 
july 2011 by M.Leddy
“I changed the Will to Shall”
Pete Seeger, on the development of “We Shall Overcome.”
grammar  music  PeteSeeger  words 
july 2011 by M.Leddy
Were and was
An update to one of the most popular posts on Orange Crate Art.
grammar  language  usage  words 
july 2011 by M.Leddy
Murdoch’s issues
“Murdoch’s phrasing places blame not on individual agents but on difficulties and problems that were somehow in the air. It’s like a driver blaming issues with alcohol for the damage to his car.”
media  newspapers  words  language 
july 2011 by M.Leddy
Clothes, information, suds, pants
Nouns, invariably plural, invariably singular.
BryanGarner  language  words 
july 2011 by M.Leddy
Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day
BryanGarner  usage  words 
july 2011 by M.Leddy
Kozol on jargon
Educational jargon: “a peculiar tendency to use a polysyllabic synonym for almost any plain and ordinary word.”
education  words 
june 2011 by M.Leddy
The Banned List
From John Rentoul of The Independent, a list of one hundred words and phrases to avoid: The Banned List.
words 
june 2011 by M.Leddy
Leonard Stern (1922–2011)
Honeymooners writer and creator of Mad Libs
Honeymooners  words 
june 2011 by M.Leddy
Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, complete
Ninety years in the making, the 21-volume, 28,000-word Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is complete.
dictionaries  words 
june 2011 by M.Leddy
The OED’s first-place verb
It’s “run.”
OED  words 
may 2011 by M.Leddy
Blues idiom of the day: dust one’s broom
From Stephen Calt’s Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary
blues  idioms  words 
may 2011 by M.Leddy
Unusual idiom of the day
“I don’t want to burden you out.”
idioms  words 
may 2011 by M.Leddy
First messy of 2011
Michiko Kakutani, using the word “messy” in a book review (again).
words 
may 2011 by M.Leddy
That said
A modest suggestion to improve early-twenty-first-century discourse: remove “that said” from the starts of sentences.
usage  words 
may 2011 by M.Leddy
Getting my ducks in a row
“Lord love a duck”: it’s everywhere.
synchronicity  words 
may 2011 by M.Leddy
Word of the day: subitize
“To perceive, without counting, the number of objects in a small group.”
words 
may 2011 by M.Leddy
Word of the day: jalousie
It’s Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day.
words 
may 2011 by M.Leddy
“Doris Day parking”
Any parking spot that seems as though it was meant to be
words 
may 2011 by M.Leddy
Phooey, a caption
The first recorded appearance of “phooey” as applied to the New Yorker Caption Contest
cartoons  words 
may 2011 by M.Leddy
The lunatic fringe again
“Lunatic fringe” first referred to hair.
culture  politics  words 
april 2011 by M.Leddy
Lunatic fringe
That hair.
culture  politics  words 
april 2011 by M.Leddy
Words of the day: pith, gist
Where do they come from?
words 
april 2011 by M.Leddy
Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day
A couple: two? A few? Several?
BryanGarner  usage  words 
april 2011 by M.Leddy
“I heart my dogs [sic] head”
Numerous news items on heart state that the OED had added the symbol ♥. Not so. It’s a new definition of the verb heart that has been added.
OED  words 
march 2011 by M.Leddy
Graphite-grey
I was (and am) very happy about hitting upon that phrasal adjective, which, as far as I could tell, had never been applied to the Blackwing pencil. (And then borrowed without attribution by California Cedar.)
Blackwing  pencils  words 
march 2011 by M.Leddy
Word of the day: aegis
Pallas Athena borrows the keys to the aegis from Dad.
Greek  Homer  words 
march 2011 by M.Leddy
Random Title Exhibit Generator
“Apposite Banality: The Dysfunction of the Local”
art  words 
march 2011 by M.Leddy
WTF
An inappropriate word in a Blogger-generated URL
Blogger  words 
march 2011 by M.Leddy
Misheard
A classic bun is a bun.
misheard  words 
february 2011 by M.Leddy
The plural of Prius, continued
“Unlike, say, campus, prius is a Latin adjective and adverb, not a noun. And Prius is not a Latin word; it’s the name of a car. Priuses makes better sense to the eye and ear, at least to my eye and ear.”
words 
february 2011 by M.Leddy
The plural of Prius
It’s Prii.
words 
february 2011 by M.Leddy
Language and labor
Worker, or employee?
words 
february 2011 by M.Leddy
Town-talk
As used in Dickens’s Bleak House
Dickens  words 
february 2011 by M.Leddy
Michiko Kakutani, messy
Overusing the word “messy.”
words 
february 2011 by M.Leddy
Eric Schmidt, literally
Literally.
Google  words 
february 2011 by M.Leddy
"The white stuff”
A tiresome phrase
words 
december 2010 by M.Leddy
Information and its discontents
Pick a field, any field, and think of people who are competent in it: are they “retaining information”? No: they know stuff.
education  words 
december 2010 by M.Leddy
Google and Caps Lock
"I don’t think the absence of Caps Lock is a step toward the disappearance of capital letters — like, say, the G in Google."
Google  words 
december 2010 by M.Leddy
The twelve days of Christmas
A Wordle by Ben Leddy
design  words 
december 2010 by M.Leddy
Word of the day: quincunx
With a passage from Sir Thomas Browne's The Garden of Cyrus
words 
december 2010 by M.Leddy
« earlier      

related tags

academia ⊕  advertising ⊕  Apple ⊕  art ⊕  attribution ⊕  BarackObama ⊕  BBC ⊕  Blackwing ⊕  Blogger ⊕  blues ⊕  BryanGarner ⊕  cartoons ⊕  cereal ⊕  characterrecognition ⊕  ChicagoManualofStyle ⊕  circumlocution ⊕  civility ⊕  college ⊕  comics ⊕  crossword ⊕  culture ⊕  DavidFosterWallace ⊕  del.icio.us ⊕  design ⊕  Dickens ⊕  dictionaries ⊕  dictionary ⊕  do-over ⊕  domesticcomedy ⊕  education ⊕  etymology ⊕  euphemism ⊕  fiction ⊕  fonts ⊕  GeorgeOrwell ⊕  Google ⊕  grammar ⊕  Greek ⊕  HaroldBloom ⊕  HartCrane ⊕  Homer ⊕  Honeymooners ⊕  houses ⊕  howtoimprove ⊕  humor ⊕  idioms ⊕  Iliad ⊕  Illinois ⊕  JamesJoyce ⊕  JohnAshbery ⊕  JohnnyCash ⊕  journalism ⊕  language ⊕  Latin ⊕  life ⊕  lotus ⊕  lotusland ⊕  Mac ⊕  MarianneMoore ⊕  marriage ⊕  media ⊕  memory ⊕  metaphor ⊕  Microsoft ⊕  misheard ⊕  misspelling ⊕  modernpoetry ⊕  music ⊕  mythology ⊕  Nabokov ⊕  names ⊕  newspapers ⊕  NewYork ⊕  NewYorkTimes ⊕  Odysseus ⊕  Odyssey ⊕  OED ⊕  Orwell ⊕  overheard ⊕  pastoral ⊕  pencils ⊕  pens ⊕  PeteSeeger ⊕  philosophy ⊕  poetry ⊕  politics ⊕  Proust ⊕  Pullum ⊕  puns ⊕  reading ⊕  redundancy ⊕  RickyGervais ⊕  RonPadgett ⊕  Sappho ⊕  signage ⊕  simile ⊕  slang ⊕  snow ⊕  spelling ⊕  stationery ⊕  Strunk ⊕  style ⊕  SufjanStevens ⊕  syllables ⊕  synchronicity ⊕  tags ⊕  technology ⊕  television ⊕  TextEdit ⊕  tile ⊕  time ⊕  translation ⊕  type ⊕  typewriter ⊕  typography ⊕  usage ⊕  VanDykeParks ⊕  weather ⊕  White ⊕  WilliamCarlosWilliams ⊕  words ⊖  work ⊕  writing ⊕ 

Copy this bookmark:



description:


tags: