Author Archives: achouston

More Linguistic Asymmetries

Posted on October 21, 2011

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 →

Posted in Word Formation, word meaning, Word Usage | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Vamp 21: Old Friends

Posted on October 3, 2011

Fatigued and hungry for blood, Sam opens the door to her Somerville apartment and switches on a light. The others, Rina, Gil and Sandor, follow her in. “The suspense is killing me, Sam! What’s going on?” Rina cuts to the … Continue reading →

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Vamp 20: Black Running Shoes

Posted on September 12, 2011

Rina, Sandor and Sam are jammed together at a small table in a loud Cambridge pub. They’d left work a few minutes early today with glum, defiant faces. Leaving early was their symbolic protest against Evan’s treatment of Gil. A … Continue reading →

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Teenage, Middle-age, New Age

Posted on September 6, 2011

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 →

Posted in language change, language variation, Word Usage | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Vamp 19: Mission Accomplished?

Posted on August 23, 2011

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 →

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Word Purge

Posted on August 22, 2011

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

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 →

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We’re All Verbs Now

Posted on August 15, 2011

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 →

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Linguistic Asymmetries

Posted on August 3, 2011

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

Blind Tasting: the Audiobook Edition

Posted on July 13, 2011

Blind Tasting is now available as an audiobook.  You can listen to sample chapters for free and you can also buy the entire, unabridged novel as a digital download. Producing this edition in a recording studio — working with a … Continue reading →

Posted in audiobooks, ebooks, fiction, storytelling | Tagged , , | 3 Comments