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One Word: Tier
“Tier” is my kind of word. It’s short. It has a neat sound. It’s familiar without being overused. Best of all, it’s useful. Physically, a tier is one of a series of stacked rows or levels. Rungs of a ladder, for instance, or the third row of seats in a stadium. Figuratively, a tier is…
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One Word: This Here
Always-inquisitive reader Mahin Pouryaghma asks about the compound construction “this here”. It’s one she sometimes encounters in her home stomping ground of rural Georgia. Thanks, Mahin, for affording me a chance to reflect on this and similar expressions. I’m treating this one as a single word for reasons I explained in the article on “compound”.…
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The Most Romantic Valentine City
Happy Valentine’s Day from America’s Most Consistently Romantic City — Knoxville, Tennessee, home of “Notes from Stonehaven”. Okay, so I had to weasel-word that (with “consistently”) in order to justify the “most” boast. Technically, Knoxville was bumped this year from first to third place by the new champ, Alexandria, Virginia. Congratulations, Alexandria. Don’t get used…
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One Word: Lucid
I had a lucid dream Wednesday night (February 10-11, 2016). My second one ever. At least that I woke up remembering. This started me thinking about the word “lucid” and how much I love it. It means clear and easily understood. Before discussing that, though, here’s the scoop on lucid dreaming. A lucid dream is…
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How to Verify Suspicious Email Offers
Kudos to readers who wrote me yesterday to make sure I was the sender of an email they found suspicious. (I was.) Here’s hoping that didn’t stop anyone from claiming two gigs of free cloud storage. In case it did, here’s the link again. Turns out you’ve still got time, if you act today: https://security.google.com/settings/security/secureaccount…
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Why All Men Are Transgender
It’s true: All men are transgender. Literally. As usual, it’s all about context. Let’s get us some! Recently I mentioned in an article that my wife, Cheri, is usually right. Joel Smith, in a guest post, said the same a few days later about his wife, Roni. You’d think we guys might get credit, would…
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One Word: Translate
To translate is to restate a thing in different words. It’s a simple concept with vast depths. The English word comes from Latin, where “trans” means “across”, and “latus” means to carry. Hence, to carry across. Typically we carry ideas across from one language to another — French to English, or German to Spanish. Being…
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The Book You Want to Read
“Write the book you want to read.” Not sure where I first heard that advice. Not even sure whether I ever actually heard it before. Either way, it feels familiar because it’s advice I’ve followed – perhaps instinctively. And whatever success I’ve had as a writer, I owe to that advice. Cheri and I heard…
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One Word: Flammable / Inflammable
What is the difference between “flammable” and “inflammable”? Nothing. Nothing at all! For all intents and purposes, they are the same word. In my previous article on the word “connote”, I questioned whether there any two English words that carry both the same meaning and the same connotation. I was inclined to believe there wasn’t.…
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Jonah Miller’s “Shrill, Empathic Joys”
You do know I’m a science geek, right? The only problem being, I know very little about actual science! It’s a field – or rather, a collection of fields – for which I have no formal training, no math foundation, no research experience. What I do instead is read obsessively – books, magazines, blogs, and…
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One Word: Vex
I’m fond of the word “vex”. My recent report on pangrams reminded me of this fondness. You’ll recall that a pangram is any sentence (shorter the better) that contains every letter of the alphabet at least once. Since working “v” and “x” into the same sentence can be a vexing challenge, it’s no wonder pangram…