by Kevin Burton Christmas brings with it a combination of the most modern of gifts under the tree and the most old-timey of words used to sing about it. Merriam-Webster dictionary has compiled a list of words we seldom encounter outside of Christmas songs. We bring you more of those today, and we …
Category Archives: dictionary
Archaic Words From Christmas Songs
by Kevin Burton Uh-oh, I think I may be archaic. Our friends at Merriam-Webster dictionary served up a timely platter of cookies this week, a list of “archaic” words we know from Christmas songs. Well I just used one of these words last week on Page 7! In order to keep this …
12 Words We Need In The English Language
by Kevin Burton What a glorious toybox is language. Words and their shadings and peculiarities have been one of the few constants I can count on in life. The little sticks-and-stones bromide which states “words will never hurt me” is false in its context. Words can hurt a lot when used improperly, especially …
Dictionary Words Are Funky, Stylish And Cool
by Kevin Burton If the 60s were groovy, the 70s were nothing if not funky. The funk was everywhere then, beginning with music, first seeping then flowing into just about everything else. The funk was the soup we swam in. But I was a little surprised to see funky show up on …
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Uptown Words For The Stylish Wordsmith
by Kevin Burton So you read the headline “uptown words” and your mind immediately goes to Uptown Girl, the Billy Joel song, right? One could take that song as a celebration of an uptown girl. I take it as the celebration of the virtues of a downtown man. “That’s what I am,” Joel …
More Words For Crimes And Misdemeanors
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 …
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 …
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