Category: Worth 1000 Pictures
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One Word: Jocular
Are you ever jocular in your use of words? Well, you are, if you ever speak in a joking, humorous, playful manner. Till recently, I divided words and their usages into two categories: formal and colloquial. Formal speech follows the strictest rules and conventions. Itâs conservative, prim, and proper. Colloquial speech is more relaxed. Itâs…
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Two Words: Prescriptive & Descriptive
In choosing your words, are you prescriptive or descriptive? Thereâs nothing necessarily wrong with either one. But youâll choose words more effectively if you know which approach youâre favoring. More precisely, you should know where you fall along the spectrum between these two extremes. Because these really are opposite ends of a continuum. Hereâs the…
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Six Words: Rainbow!
How many colors in a rainbow? Six! What? Doesnât âeverybody knowâ there are seven? No, but seven is what most of us were taught: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Thatâs how I learned them in school. We even were taught to remember them using the name ROY G BIV. Too bad it…
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What’s Your Favorite Color?
Whatâs your favorite color? Why do you like it? Mine is blue. It soothes me. Not that blue is the only color I like. Red excites me â especially those deep maroon shades. In winter, I crave the deep lush green of midsummer. There really arenât many colors I donât like. But always I come…
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Two Words: Were / Where
Has anyone else noticed a recent uptick in the frequency with which people misspell âwhereâ as âwereâ? That is, leaving out the âhâ? Resulting in written sentences like âI wonder were I left my car keys?â Iâve seen this a lot recently. In emails. In text messages. Even in supposedly well-edited articles in newspapers and…
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Tall Oaks From Tiny Eggcorns
Do you use eggcorns in your speech and writing? Donât answer too quickly! Most of us do use eggcorns, at least occasionally. But by their nature, theyâre something we do without being aware of it. Although eggcorns are common, the word isnât. Not yet, anyway. An eggcorn is an expression in which we unknowinglyreplace one…
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One Word: Convey
The real challenge is to convey what we mean. Itâs tough enough to say what we mean. But itâs more difficult â and far more important â to convey it. Those two are not the same. To say something well, we put it into precise words that capture, and perfectly express, our meaning. But what…
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One Word: Auto-antonym
An auto-antonym is any word that functions as its own opposite. The very idea seemed bonkers when I first heard about it. But English has quite a few such words. Normal antonyms are words with opposing meanings â up and down, in and out, good and bad. Whatâs different in the case of an âautoâ…
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One Word: The Elephant in the Room
Want to write and speak with lasting impact? Want to convey thoughts that touch, that move, that heal? Donât worry too much about the right words. Focus first on finding the right topic. (The words come later.) Thereâs one right topic, and itâs always the same: Itâs the elephant in the room. No, not the…
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One Word: Next
Weâre hurtling down the freeway in my friendâs car. Heâs driving. Iâm riding shotgun, giving directions. I tell him: âGet off at the next exit.â He says: âOkay.â A few minutes later, as we approach the exit, he puts pedal to the metal and roars past it. âHey!â I exclaim. âYou were supposed to turn…
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One Word: Beg
My white-haired physicist friend assured me he could prove there is no life after death. That certainly caught my attention. He knew it would. Thatâs because I do believe in human immortality. I think, God willing, that being dead will be a lot of fun. My friendâs bold challenge left me no choice but to hear…
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One Word: Mild!
Cheri and I were with a group of fellow Peace Corps volunteers in Grenada. The year was 1989. With us (because we were guests in his office) was an American career diplomat. This gathering happened (coincidentally) at a time when most of the volunteers were dismayed by news of a recent political appointment in Washington.…