Sample Blind Tasting for free
Read sample chapters of Blind Tasting at SmashwordsWord of the Day
LEGERDEMAIN (Noun, English) Skilled, dexterous use of the hands when performing magical tricks. Has also taken on a pejorative meaning of deceit or trickery. Note: Cited originally in English during the 16th century. From the French phrase 'léger de main' (light of hand).-
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Author Archives: achouston
Smashwords Interviews
The indie ebook publisher, Smashwords, is offering a new feature to its authors — an interview template. An author writes answers to questions about their life and their writing, and can publish these to their Smashwords profile page. A nifty … Continue reading
Posted in Announcement, ebooks, self-publishing
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Seman-tech Changes?
We know that languages change over time. Some of these changes are shifts in word usage and word senses. The world of technology changes rapidly, and it’s no surprise that word senses might reflect that. Three English nouns have caught … Continue reading
Word Jumbles #11
DIPARS ERUSIFS ETARING ONORISE REDSET Solutions can be found on the Answers page.
Posted in Word Usage
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The Hidden Past of Words: English final -y
Consider the following list of everyday English words: memory, happy, baby, crazy, victory, city, silly, puppy, army For starters, they all end in -y and they can be grouped further as nouns (memory, baby, victory, city, puppy, army) or adjectives … Continue reading
Trailers for Blind Tasting (audiobook edition) now on YouTube
Check out trailers for the audiobook version of Blind Tasting: Trailer 1: Immerse yourself in the tale of three geeks and a dog as they explore what is definitely not your ordinary wine trail. Set in Silicon Valley, Napa and … Continue reading
Posted in audiobook trailer, audiobooks, fiction
Tagged audiobook trailer, blind tasting, fiction, youtube
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Plural Logic
Forming the plural of a noun in English is pretty easy — mostly you add final -s to the singular form (with occasional spelling modifications: story -> stories). Linguists refer to nouns that form their plurals with final -s as … Continue reading
Posted in etymology, language change, Word Usage
Tagged garments, meaning change, plurals
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More Linguistic Asymmetries
The English prefix un- comes directly from Old English (and shares a common Indo-European root with Latin in- and Greek a-) Prefixed to an adjective A, the resulting new word means ‘not A’ and can convey either positive or negative … Continue reading
Teenage, Middle-age, New Age
English can form adjectives from the past participles of verbs. Consider: break:broken the vase was broken -> the broken vase fall:fallen his popularity has fallen recently -> his fallen popularity bake:baked the bread was baked in a brick oven -> … Continue reading
Word Purge
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 deleting words, dictionaries, word usage
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