::Great Sites::
Recent Content Quake Posts
- Walgreens Friday, July 25th! - Posted to Little Miss Know It All
- Coupons from Ebay - Posted to Little Miss Know It All
- Detroit Lions Believe in Now - Posted to Detroit Lions
- And then there was one... - Posted to Arizona Cardinals
- A New Contract Extension for the Incredible Hulk, er Luis Castillo - Posted to San Diego Chargers
Subscribe through Feedburner
-
Archives
-
Categories
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
There are numerous Yiddish words that have been appropriated into English, from putz to schmooze to maven (see, for example, my very entertaining colleague The Movie Maven who lives up to the meaning of the term “maven” which comes from a Yiddish word meaning “expert”). Native Yiddish speakers could be forgiven for thinking this appropriation […]
Every once in a while I’ll hear someone refer to a collection of things as a “bevy”. Earlier this week a co-worker mentioned that she had a “bevy of flowers” in her yard. Bevy is one of those words I’ve heard and used, I thought, with a pretty clear idea of what it meant, but […]
I’ve often heard people describe themselves as an avid fan or heard them say they have an avid interest in something without thinking too much about the word avid itself, even though it seems like a strange, interesting little word. When a friend suggested over a game of Scrabble that avid should be a Word […]
The contributions of Arabic culture to the world are simply breathtaking. In addition to rescuing works of classical literature, including the writings of Plato and Aristotle, which eventually led to the Renaissance in the West, Arabs have also given the world centuries of beautiful art, original literature, and expanded knowledge in scientific fields like […]
The funny thing about words is how they can completely turn around in their meanings, often going from something incredibly negative to very positive. The term yahoo, for instance, was coined by Jonathan Swift. As a noun it meant the very basest, grossest, most primitive form of humanity imaginable. In Gulliver’s Travels the sentient, speaking […]
For any simple word there’s almost always a fancy one that could, in a pinch, or, especially in a game of Scrabble, replace it. Take, for instance, the word xeric. The Oxford English Dictionary defines this word as, “Having or characterized by a scanty amount of moisture.” In other words “xeric” means “dry”. It’s primarily […]
This week’s word is: wasabi. If you’ve ever eaten sushi, you’re familiar with the little green ball of paste that’s usually somewhere on your plate, as well as the surprising kick you sometimes get when a little wasabi is inside your maki or nigiri. And if you’ve ever been a sushi novice (hey, we all […]
Spell checkers, or maybe spellcheckers, are funny things. Depending on what you’re using, you might get corrected if you misspell something. For instance I misspell “misspell” all the time–that second “s” just don’t look right to me–so my spellchecker picks it up and automatically corrects it. Language is flexible, though. Maybe I want to say […]
This week’s word of the week is: vamoose. Derived from the Spanish vamos, meaning, “let us go” it’s a word most of us probably associate with old-time prospectors and prairie folk, it originally was used to mean “to decamp”, as in “let’s vamoose”, although it’s also been used as a command as far back as […]
I love dictionaries because it’s so amazing how words mean what they mean, how they can evolve through time, taking on completely different meanings. And they’re flexible in their meanings. Take, for instance, this definition from one of my favorite dictionaries: |
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Copyright © 2007 Just Write • Powered by WordPress • Driven by the internet domain registration services of Loud Sign.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
