by Kevin Burton We all know that time marches on. So does technology and so does the language we use to describe it. Today from our friends at Merriam-Webster dictionary, we get some phrases made necessary by those inexorable marches. They are called retronyms. Think of them as a blast to the past. …
Category Archives: language
The Eight Most Beautiful Words In English?
by Kevin Burton Not sure who at the Dictionary Scoop website has deemed himself/herself worthy to determine the most beautiful words in English, but here goes. I bring you the website’s choices below. It’s at least the starting point for an argument. And since there can’t possibly be an ending point to such …
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Great Words From Great Literature
by Kevin Burton If you have ever suffered a slip of the tongue, or a trip and all out tumble, you will appreciate the first of our words today from Merriam-Webster. Who among us hasn’t reached for a word, deployed it with great confidence, only to find it mangled in some way, often …
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 …
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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 …
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 …
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