Tag Archives: word formation

We’re All Verbs Now

Posted on August 15, 2011 by achouston

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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Gates

Posted on December 26, 2010 by achouston

The word gate is a good old English word, the form being geat in Old English (plural geatu) and whose meaning was ‘an opening or entrance’.  A watergate (from the 15th century) is a channel for water; the first element … Continue reading →

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Freewheeling Expression

Posted on September 17, 2010 by achouston

Do printed dictionaries still matter? I doubt most people use them much nowadays to check spellings — spellcheckers are nearly ubiquitous in word-processing software of all types. There are also myriad sources for usage examples, including many online resources that … Continue reading →

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What’s up with up

Posted on July 19, 2010 by achouston

The word ‘up’ in English has many uses and functions: it occurs as an adverb  (we need to liven up our presentation),  a preposition  (the mouse crawled up the drainpipe), an adjective (the mood was definitely up at the meeting), … Continue reading →

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Words without Pictures

Posted on July 13, 2010 by achouston

A lot of lists get published on blogs and twitter feeds. The 10-item list seems to be especially popular: the 10 things you need to know before the market opens each day, the 10 stupid mistakes made when pitching to … Continue reading →

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The Age of Peccaries

Posted on July 8, 2010 by achouston

Leave it to a computer to rub our noses in the nitty-gritty of semantics. Mostly, as we go about our day, we toss out words and sentences to our fellow language speakers and communication takes place, more or less. Building … Continue reading →

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X + icon

Posted on July 2, 2010 by achouston

Ever notice how easy it is to create new words in English with certain suffixes? Consider ‘marathon’ which actually was the name of an ancient Greek city and famous as the starting point for a runner who ran from there … Continue reading →

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