by Kevin Burton The Page 7 blog publishes five days a week, usually, and almost every time I post it, I tease it (verb) on Facebook. A tease (noun) is like a little commercial. Mine are two or three-sentence previews that I write to try to get people interested in reading it. …
Category Archives: dictionary
Last Word On Last Letter: Canada Says “Zed”
by Kevin Burton It’s the beginning of a new year, so leave it to Page 7 to take you to the end – of the alphabet that is. May I be the first to wish you a very happy International Z Day. “Z Day, celebrated on Jan. 1, is a quirky and …
Continue reading “Last Word On Last Letter: Canada Says “Zed””
Keeping Score With The Language Of Sports
by Kevin Burton I knew sports played a big role in the shaping of our common language, but I didn’t know how big. We previously brought you a list of sports idioms on Page 7, but none of the ones from Dictionary Scoop that we posted yesterday or the one below, we’re on …
Continue reading “Keeping Score With The Language Of Sports”
Sporty Origins Of Some Popular Expressions
by Dictionary Scoop Have you ever heard someone say “I’ll have to start from scratch”? Ever wondered what “in the nick of time” means? What all these expressions have in common is that they originated in the world of sports. Want to know more? Discover all those phrases you often say but didn’t know …
Continue reading “Sporty Origins Of Some Popular Expressions”
Celebrate Your Victories, Even The Small Ones
by Kevin Burton Mitch Holthus is the radio voice of the Kansas City Chiefs. He’s really good at his job, in the overheated manner of the hometown play-by-play guy. There is a nearly-universal breathless presentation of sports that attempts to elevate it to something truly significant, when it really is not. Hey, …
Continue reading “Celebrate Your Victories, Even The Small Ones”
Power Slanguage Of A Groovy Generation
by Dictionary Scoop The 60s were truly a magical time, weren’t they? If there’s one word that truly defined this decade, it would be the word “freedom”: After all, the 60s were defined by their revolutionary new takes on music, art, and society in general. In fact, this era was so groundbreaking that …
Sharp-Dressed Words From Fashion Industry
by Dictionary Scoop In this article, we uncover the origins of 10 items from the fashion industry. Even though all of these garments have evolved over time, their unusual names remain. 1-Denim A couple of centuries before Levi Strauss popularized denim jeans, two cities in Europe were already developing the textile that would become an icon of …
Continue reading “Sharp-Dressed Words From Fashion Industry”
Careful How You Navigate Foreign Exchange
by Kevin Burton There was a brief time in my life when I got paid in pesos, as I was teaching English to Mexican nationals in a language school in Puebla, Mexico. I don’t remember all the specifics now, but for some reason I wanted change for (I think) a 1,000-peso bill. I …
Continue reading “Careful How You Navigate Foreign Exchange”
English Idiom Equivalents In Other Languages
by Dictionary Scoop To say that the English language is filled to the brim with quirky and baffling idioms is no groundbreaking news. While we have previously delved into the inherent strangeness of the idioms we use every day, one of the most beautiful aspects of these phrases is how difficult they are to translate: …
Continue reading “English Idiom Equivalents In Other Languages”
Latin, Like Ancient Rome, Never Gets Old
by Merriam-Webster Dictionary Over the centuries, certain Latin phrases have been used widely enough in English to get included in the dictionary. This list contains some of our favorites: In Vino Veritas Definition – “there is truth in wine”: The classy thing to say when you’ve had too much to drink and have just …
Page 7 