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A good egg
If you’ve been to (or live in) the midwestern section of the US, you’ve probably seen or even visited a Bob Evans restaurant. As you might expect, the restaurants are named after the founder, Bob Evans, who was born May 30, 1918. Evans didn’t originally set out to be a restauranteur; he was a farmer. Continue reading
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Who needs more than 3 letters
Most obscure words are sesquipedalian — that is, they’re long, multisyllabic constructions that might just be obscure because most people can’t remember them. Surely there can’t be very many extremely short words — say, just three letters — that most people haven’t heard of? Well…let’s have a look. Some short words have to do with Continue reading
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Stuff overboard!
It’s not unusual to see the phrase “flotsam and jetsam” used just like it was in 1884: “A mania for buying all sorts of flotsam and jetsam.” That’s always the phrase, in that order. “Jetsam and flotsam” just wouldn’t sound the same. And you hardly ever see “flotsam” without “jetsam,” even though they’re really not the same Continue reading
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If I had a ladder
There’s a very handy tool for anybody who needs to reach things like the top of a high wall, the high ceiling of a house, branches of trees that are out of reach. It’s been around for millennia: the ladder. But to use a ladder, you have to have something sturdy to lean it against Continue reading
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Say aaahhhh
English has a problem with vowels; there aren’t enough of them. That’s one reason why English spelling is so ridiculous; you’ve got to cope with “long” vowel sounds like the “a” in “fame” or the “i” in “ice”, as well as “short” vowel sounds like the “a” in “father” or the “i” in “trick”. But Continue reading
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Get off my lawn!
“Old fogey”is indeed pretty old. Nowadays, of course, it means somebody well up in years whose attitudes and opinions tend to be outdated — sometimes to the extent of being funny. If some old codger is heard complaining about “the kids today,” that’s a sure sign of an old fogey. In the 1700s, a “fogey” Continue reading
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The Eclipse of 585 BCE
Today is the day that Thales, an ancient Greek philosopher/mathematician/scientist (we don’t really have a good word for those ancient thinkers) correctly predicted a solar eclipse in 585 BCE. Since solar eclipses are physical, objective events that can be projected both backwards and forwards in time, today is the anniversary of an ancient date that Continue reading
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Terms of Rhetoric
Yesterday we had a look at nautical terms. For today, the technical writers of the world would like to bring you the terms used in the foundation of our field: rhetoric. You probably can’t get through secondary school without knowing, at least temporarily, that a “simile” is almost the same as a “metaphor”, but with Continue reading
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Ask Shorty
A “tall tale” is a fiction; a fanciful yarn that might be about anything from the abominable snowman you saw in last week’s snowstorm to the fantastic exploits of Paul Bunyan, the giant woodsman of US legend. But what makes it “tall?” The phrase “tall tale” probably comes from one of the older meanings of Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. I shouldn’t be surprised, but she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.
Check out my other blog, Techlimitics, where I’m grappling with the nature of simplicity.
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