by Kevin Burton The Page 7 blog publishes five days a week, usually, and almost every time I post it, I tease it (verb) on Facebook. A tease (noun) is like a little commercial. Mine are two or three-sentence previews that I write to try to get people interested in reading it. …
Tag Archives: Merriam-Webster
Celebrate Your Victories, Even The Small Ones
by Kevin Burton Mitch Holthus is the radio voice of the Kansas City Chiefs. He’s really good at his job, in the overheated manner of the hometown play-by-play guy. There is a nearly-universal breathless presentation of sports that attempts to elevate it to something truly significant, when it really is not. Hey, …
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Other Terms For “Underwear” In Plain Sight
by Kevin Burton Now don’t go getting your panties in a bunch, but today we’re going to mention the unmentionable. The dictionary made me do it! This is Merriam-Webster ‘s list of ten better ways to say “underwear.” Getting one’s “knickers in a twist” is the way they say that phrase in …
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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: …
More English Words From Japanese
by Kevin Burton Some of my totally blind friends used to fold dollar bills in certain ways so they would know what denomination they were. That was before the days of bill reader devices, so I’m not sure anybody does that folding any more. Anyway I used to call that folding that people …
English Words That Come From Japanese
by Kevin Burton Words do not respect borders, nor do they need passports to move from country to country. We don’t think of Japan so much as an origin for English words, but plenty of words are borrowed from Japanese. Merriam-Webster dictionary has served up a basketful, some of which I bring today. …
Tell Her She’s Beautiful In All New Ways
by Kevin Burton OK guys, Valentine’s Day is coming. This gift from me to you, for use in your valentine’s messages, comes with a warning label. This is a list of words that mean “beautiful,” supplied by our friends at Merriam-Webster. Some of these words don’t sound very complimentary though. Wade through them …
Retronyms: The New Defining The Old
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. …
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 …
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