by Kevin Burton “Scrabble” is not a German word meaning “one letter off,” that’s just my little joke. Scrabble also at its essence is not a word game as commonly supposed, but a game of mathematics and strategic placement of little tile soldiers. For the words used in scrabble aren’t words so …
Category Archives: language
Loud Arguments About Silent Letters
by Kevin Burton When my parents issued me flash cards before kindergarten, I wondered why the work “knife” had a K in it when it didn’t do anything. All these years later I hear from Merriam-Webster that not just e’s and k’s but all the letters of the English alphabet are silent at …
All The Letters Can Be Silent? Shut Up!
by Kevin Burton Silent E is so famous it has a song, we all know about that one. We know how the letter e at the end of man, changes the word to mane, for example. The silent e turns the a from short to long. But did you know all the …
Hearing My Story In The Rock And Roll
by Kevin Burton The stories, the images, the sound and fury of rock and roll, truly resonate when they hit close to home. By now we have enough rocking sounds to fill the seven seas. The messages are all over the map. The sheer variety is breathtaking. Not every song will get in …
Hey Word Lovers, Have An Awesome Day!
by Kevin Burton Good day you awesome readers! Are you sick yet of the word “awesome”? The term’s overuse is sparking some awesome outrage among speakers of English. Some generational friction emerges when you look into who is cool with “awesome” and who is not. “Awesome” started with the California surfer crowd …
My ABCs: C Is For Communication
by Kevin Burton So I had this great idea for a series, my ABCs. Take the words that letters stand for in kindergarten, A for apple, B for ball, etc., and trade them in for the words that seem more appropriate after years and years of experience in life. I started this …
Rapping To The Ladies, Wishful Thinking
by Kevin Burton I love the Doobie Brothers, but I have a complaint. Let’s engage in a little wishful thinking, shall we? I wish Michael McDonald would enunciate. Wishful thinking is “the attribution of reality to what one wishes to be true or the tenuous justification of what one wants to believe,” according …
Seeing The World As A Blind Newsman
by Kevin Burton I’ve heard some speeches, I’ve made some speeches. In the end, I am speechless. For years I was a self-styled superhero, defending the blind from the ignorant and the arrogant. I had logic on my side. I had passion. But that metaphorical cape I wore on the job, I …
Quick Music Fans, What Is A Groove?
by Kevin Burton One of my beep baseball coaches called me “the answer man.” This time, I struck out. My wife asked me “What is a groove?” I am an amateur musician and somewhat of a historian. You would think that question would be right in my wheelhouse. I gave perhaps the …
Wordle Is A Thing, But I Better Not
by Kevin Burton There’s a new game, it’s a craze actually, called Wordle. You have heard of it no doubt. Two of my favorite bloggers wrote about Wordle on back to back days this week. That qualifies it as a craze for me, I don’t get out much. Here’s an explanation of …
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