by Kevin Burton What I see 20 feet away, you can see 200 feet away. By definition therefore, I am legally blind. So you would think, all other things being equal, my career as a jaywalker could/should be painfully short, or maybe even disastrously shortened. I was very nearly run over by …
Tag Archives: definitions
“Charity” And Words That Changed Meanings
by Kevin Burton The first time I encountered “charity” in the King James Bible, it made me scratch my head. It didn’t seem to fit just right. Given time, words will do that to you. “Charity” in the King James most commonly means “love.” Here are more specifics on the Biblical definition …
Continue reading ““Charity” And Words That Changed Meanings”
Turnabout Not Always Fair Play With Words
by Dictionary Scoop. If “nonverbal” is the opposite of “verbal,” shouldn’t “nonchalant” be the opposite of “chalant”? As it turns out, it’s not so simple. “Unpaired words” are terms we assume should exist, based on standard linguistic rules, but don’t. To test your knowledge and learn more about unpaired words, guess which of …
Continue reading “Turnabout Not Always Fair Play With Words”
The Apostle Paul Says “Dress For Success”
by Kevin Burton Some of us, as high school seniors, went to classes called “College Prep.,” and what an honor that was. Somebody thought we were “college material.” One of my teachers, can’t remember which one, clued me in on what might be coming just around the corner by getting creative with my …
Continue reading “The Apostle Paul Says “Dress For Success””
The Unkindest Contranym Of All? Ask Fido
by Kevin Burton Imagine if you will, a Richard Pryor bit from the 70s, that could have been, to introduce the concept of the contranym, a word with two opposite meanings. These lines are from the family puppy, whose usual panting, tail-wagging enthusiasm for a car ride (oh boy!) has gone tragically wrong: …
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 …
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 …
What I Couldn’t Remember, I Now Can’t Forget
by Kevin Burton The Scrabble words deployed against you that get you beat; those are the ones you remember the best. Something kind of similar happened with my Bible memory verses recently. I’ve written previously about my memory verses, typed on paper, taped onto index cards of various colors. I am up …
Continue reading “What I Couldn’t Remember, I Now Can’t Forget”
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 …
Page 7 