Monthly Archives: August 2011

Vamp 19: Mission Accomplished?

Posted on August 23, 2011 by

Dean Divers finishes the bad cup of coffee made in the small coffee maker in his motel room. He glances at the alarm clock next to the bed. The guy at the front desk said the mail usually arrives by … Continue reading →

Posted in ebooks, fiction, writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Word Purge

Posted on August 22, 2011 by

There is an online post at the British newspaper Guardian reporting on words to be excluded from new editions of dictionaries. The post invites readers to list their own choices for words they’d like removed from the English language. My … Continue reading →

Posted in Semantics, social context of language, Word Usage | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

VAMP 18: Delayed Pastries

Posted on August 16, 2011 by

The morning air is bracing as Sam dashes across the street where Lila’s Bakery is. She walks past the shop and down the block and turns into the branch office of a local bank. Good thing I brought the checkbook … Continue reading →

Posted in fiction, Word Usage, writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

We’re All Verbs Now

Posted on August 15, 2011 by

Maybe, maybe not. Are there any English speakers today who don’t accept text as a verb? It was an easy move to permit text as a verb, follownig the paradigm of other communication channel noun-verb pairs in English — the … Continue reading →

Posted in language change, Word Formation, Word Usage | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Linguistic Asymmetries

Posted on August 3, 2011 by

Have you ever noticed that, while some words which take a prefix seem to form nice pairings with opposite meaning polarity (tie/untie, compliance/noncompliance, tasteful/distasteful), other pairs don’t work this way? For example, there is nonplussed, but not plussed, insipid, but … Continue reading →

Posted in etymology, language change, Semantics, Word Formation, Word Usage | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments