If you write an academic paper, you include an “abstract;” a brief synopsis of the entire work. If you’re in business, you might work hard on an “elevator pitch” — a brief abstract of the product or service you’re trying to push, timed so you can deliver the whole thing while trapped in an elevator… Continue reading

There are quite a few people sick right now. Some of them probably have “the flu” — and it occurred to me, doesn’t it seem like “the flu” is a strange name for a disease? The real story is even stranger than you might think. “Flu” is short for “influenza,” which is the full name… Continue reading

When you’re in the process of using some words — or even sometimes just when you’re looking at them — they look misspelled even though they’re not. There’s something about those words that’s just awkward. One good example is “awkward” — a “K” in between two “W”s?? That combination is certainly unusual, apparently there’s only… Continue reading

A “complaint” is a form of the word “complain”, which comes from the Old French word “complaindre”, meaning “to lament”. The word’s roots go all the way back to Proto-Indo-European. Evidently people have been complaining for quite a while.  One of the things they complain about, at least once they reach a certain age, is… Continue reading

A “collocation” is two words joined by “and” or “or.” They’re quite common; you’ll immediately recognize “ladies and gentlemen,” for example. There’s also “night and day,” “bed and breakfast,” “bread and butter,” “salt and pepper,” and so on.  These are all in their common order; you seldom hear “gentlemen and ladies,” and I’m pretty sure… Continue reading

As some people (including you) know, “adroit,” which means adept and agile, is etymologically derived from the French phrase “á droit” (to the right). For some reason the French (I suspect they weren’t alone in this) used to think that being right-handed meant that you were capable of being adept, agile, graceful, and coordinated, and… Continue reading

You can charge forward, charge a battery, charge someone with a responsibility (and then they’re in charge of it), or charge them with a crime (which might lead to them being in charge of nothing at all for a period of time), and if you’re hungry you can charge a meal by using a credit… Continue reading

Words take on new meanings all the time. One of them is terrific. No, I mean one of them is “terrific.” It comes from the Latin word “terrificus,” which means frightening. But of course nowadays if you say something is terrific, you mean it’s marvelous and not frightening at all. Something like, I don’t know,… Continue reading

These days the language we use is full of acronyms. Probably too full; people are so used to acronyms that they sometimes assume that a word that’s not an acronym must be one, so they invent it. When they do that, they’re creating a “backronym.” For example, there’s a test applied to newborn babies to… Continue reading