by Kevin Burton Children utter phrases such as “cross my heart, hope to die” to self-administer a kind of playground oath. But it’s not binding. Today our friends at Merriam-Webster bring us words dealing with what we say, or refuse to say, under a legal oath in a court of law. But …
Category Archives: dictionary
Words From The Wrong Side Of The Law
by Kevin Burton Some of the entries on today’s word list from Merriam-Webster I learned as a wee lad, by following the news about the federal government. If it hadn’t been for the Nixon Administration and the Watergate scandal, I would have thought hush money was money a parent spends to keep the …
English Words That Came From Products
by Kevin Burton We’ve got moxie in a can. We’ve got monkey bars and monkey business, and it all comes from Merriam-Webster. This list from the dictionary highlights products that hit the market with varying success but had more staying power as words in the English language. So maybe the inventor didn’t get …
More Middle Words From Merriam-Webster
by Kevin Burton Today we continue a look at words and phrases about the middle from the Merriam Webster dictionary. We start with two phrases about being forced into difficult decisions: Devil and the deep blue sea Many phrases that evoke in-between-ness also situate the speaker between two undesirable end points, like the …
Stuck In The Middle With Merriam-Webster
by Kevin Burton I hope you don’t find this a middling effort, but today we bring to you, words about the middle. This is a list from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, but it reminds me of the late, great Gerry Rafferty. While a member of Stealers Wheel, Rafferty wrote “Stuck In The Middle With …
How Long Is A Jiffy Exactly?
by Kevin Burton Last month on Page 7 we looked at words such as several and handful that defy exact definition. Here’s another: Jiffy. How long is a jiffy? Merriam-Webster says a jiffy is “a very short period of time: moment, instant.” The Cambridge dictionary lists synonyms “flash, heartbeat, instant, split second.” …
Words About Words From Merriam-Webster
by Kevin Burton The second offering from today’s word list from Merriam-Webster strikes me as something Bob Dylan might slip into a song to confuse the matter. The dictionary mentions that “epithet” has a meaning without negative connotations. I say that meaning has been completely swallowed up and that using it in the …
Going Willy Nilly Into Rhyming Words
by Kevin Burton Who doesn’t love a good rhyme? We’re serving up a full platter of them today with rhyming words, courtesy of our friends at Merriam-Webster. They are called reduplicative words. Some are hyphenated, some are compound words, some separated into two words. But they are all fun. Hocus-Pocus: nonsense or sham …
Common Words Borrowed From Arabic
by Kevin Burton Have there been more impassioned articles written about the evil of alcohol or the evil of algebra? Who can tell really? But these twin menaces are linked in today’s word list from Merriam-Webster, words borrowed by English from Arabic: Algebra Anyone who has unpleasant memories of slogging through this …
From India With Love: Ten Borrowed Words
by Kevin Burton Hindi and Urdu are two of the languages spoken in India. Today, a list of words borrowed from those languages, courtesy of Merriam-Webster. You can thank the dictionary and me today, if you are sleepy, or need to wash your hair: Pajamas: a loose usually two-piece lightweight suit designed especially for …
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