Words We Got From Characters In Books

by Kevin Burton    I don’t regret having read the backs of so many baseball cards so much as a youth, but I do wish I had mixed in a few more of the better works of literature.    Today we get some of what I missed out on, from a list compiled by Merriam-Webster …

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 …

These Palindromes Get You Coming And Going

by dictionaryscoop.com    We all remember palindromes from our childhood years. Funny sentences that read the same forward as backward. Some are short, some incredibly long, and while some do make sense, most of them are surrealist, to say the least.    From the whimsical “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama!” to the succinct …

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 …

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 …

Dictionary Highlights Man’s Best Friend

by Kevin Burton    I have suspended my devotion to cats long enough this week to share  some dictionary words from Merriam-Webster that pertain to dogs.    Before we continue with their list, here is one the dictionary curiously left out – dog days.    Dog days is “the period between early July and early …

Merriam-Webster: Words Inspired By Dogs

by Kevin Burton    If you read this blog regularly, you know I am a cat guy. A cat whisperer, my wife says.    Today we’ll give equal time to dog lovers, by revealing some of the Merriam-Webster dictionary’s list of words inspired by dogs.     According to Forbes, 44.5 percent of US households have …

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 …