Pylimitics

It’s slightly ironic that English has so many words for “not so many words.” Someone who prefers to keep their verbal expressions to a minimum could be called “terse”, “brief”, “taciturn”, “curt”, “succinct”, “trenchant”, “pithy”, “laconic”, “brusque”, “gruff”, “brief”, ‘abrupt”, “short”, “bluff”, or — and this is probably the best one, even though nowadays it’s… Continue reading

“This is a lipogram – a book, paragraph or similar thing in writing that lacks a symbol, particularly (but not always) that symbol fifth in rank out of our 26 script-signs (found amidst ‘d’ and ‘f’), which stands for a sound such as that in ‘kiwi’. I won’t bring it up right now, to avoid… Continue reading

In the southern part of England there are areas where the rock underlying most of the hills is white and chalky. The famous “white cliffs of Dover” are the iconic example, but many hills and meadows around those parts are just as white underneath. This has been known to the residents since prehistoric times, and… Continue reading

Doc Savage is a character created by a publishing house rather than by an author. This is not as unusual as you might think. Doc Savage first appeared in 1933 in “Doc Savage Magazine,” which was not a comic book but really one of their predecessors. It was a “pulp magazine” containing prose stories, generally… Continue reading

Not too long after Izaak Walton wrote a heartfelt guide to fishing in “The Compleat Angler” in 1653, George Gascoigne penned “The Noble Arte of Venerie or Hunting” in 1575. Both books were what today we might call how-to guides. Among the handy pointers Gascoigne dispensed was this: “There is difference betweene the fewmet of… Continue reading