by Kevin Burton I was sure I would see it. Lead-pipe sinch said I. Metaphysical certitude, as John McLaughlin used to say on The McLaughlin Group. Merriam -Webster put together a list of words about energy and enthusiasm and I happily scrolled to see what they had to say about the word “spunk.” …
Category Archives: Words
Cows And Chickens’ Idiomatic Homecoming
by Kevin Burton American farm country has fed the world and supplied it with a number of mud-caked idioms, as we have seen with the help of Merriam-Webster. Today we bring it all home with our third and final installment of Barnyard Idioms. We start with an idiom touching on my job …
Flying Pigs And Uncounted Chickens
by Kevin Burton I seem to remember on The Beverly Hillbillies, one or more of the Clampetts describing someone as “muley” to mean they were exceptionally stubborn. Now I see that Merriam-Webster, the dictionary supplying us with idioms from farm country, defines muley as “hornless.” Stay tuned for our second helping of …
Idioms Straight From The Horse’s Mouth
by Kevin Burton Today I am owning my farm-country standing and taking a look at some phrases we have exported to the rest of the country. Merriam-Webster calls them “barnyard idioms.” I don’t love that name but I must admit some of these phrases are more than a little muddy. From Kansas …
My Prayer To God In His Good Morning
by Kevin Burton What can I say about the morning that poets through the centuries haven’t already said, much better than I can? And what could I tell you about the morning that you don’t already hold in your innermost heart? Answer to both: nothing. With our heads, we know that …
Words For Your Wild, Carefree, Summer
by Kevin Burton Summer has not arrived but planning for summer has. Our friends at Merriam-Webster have provided some words that may or may not describe your 2023 getaway(s). Frankly, I would avoid some of these, but that’s up to you: Jaunty adjective: sprightly in manner or appearance. When jaunty first came into English use …
Standing O For Diane Tirado, My Zero Hero
by Kevin Burton At work you shouldn’t expect pay for, and at school you shouldn’t expect credit for, work you didn’t do. I give you that conclusion up front, lest it be lost in this strange little tale. There is weirdness in this story, I warn you. The first strange thing is …
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What’s Stranger Than Fiction, AND Truth?
by Kevin Burton All the cool band names are taken. Trust me. Record label names too. When last we gathered, I spun a fictional account based ever so loosely goosely on a true story. It was about a band called the Palindromes that made it big in Bermuda. The true part of …
Hey Marketers, Watch Your Language
by Kevin Burton The good people at http://www.thoughtco.com have poked into some language-barrier marketing stories and discovered some of them are simply not true. The first one burst my bubble. I heard somewhere that Chevrolet had to stop selling Nova cars in Mexico because “no va” in Spanish means, “it doesn’t go.” …
Video Killed Your Imagination, Not Radio
I think I’m done writing about MTV and Clear Channel for the moment, but I have one more thought on that Buggles tune, “Video Killed The Radio Star.” I raised the question without answering it in my Friday story: “If you could get your favorite top 40 hits, with pictures, moving pictures, wouldn’t that …
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