Old-school news, just in time
by Kevin Burton Now flowers come from seeds. But flower etymologies come from every linguistic corner under heaven, ubiquitous as the flowers themselves it seems. On a beautiful Spring day, imagine an average couple driving the highways and byways of the heartland in a beautiful 2012 Toyota. And the wife might say, “Do …
Continue reading “Flowers Can Wait, They’ll Be Here Tomorrow”
by Kevin Burton In a nursing home there is life and there is death. Both are palpable, as ever before. But in all our salad days, we didn’t notice. We were young, we were strong, energetic and smart. We were even hip, and sophisticated – well not quite sophisticated – but surely driving …
Continue reading “Lessons In Life, Death And A Glorious Hope”
by Kevin Burton It’s deeply upsetting to me that my mother was in a hospital, alone on Christmas Eve, in what could easily be her last Christmas season. There isn’t a phone in her room and I don’t believe she grabbed her cell phone for an emergency trip to ER Monday night. So …
Continue reading “Love To You Who Are Grieving On Christmas”
by Dictionary Scoop The beautiful Italian language includes terms that perfectly encapsulate the meaning of things other languages need more than one word to define. Since food and classical music are two very successful Italian exports, it should come as no surprise that many words we use in English-speaking countries relating to these …
Continue reading “Italian Words That We Use (Most) Every Day”
by Kevin Burton Merriam-Webster promised me a list of Scrabble words without vowels, but delivered a bunch of words (with one exception) with the letter Y in them. Y is a vowel, a card-carrying vowel. The fact that it has a part-time job as a consonant does not change that. The venerable dictionary …
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. …
by Dictionary Scoop Aside from the mechanical aspects of moving oneself from one place to the other, the poetry of wanderlust and journeys creates words to describe sensations, feelings, and experiences. All over the world, different expressions from different languages describe similar human experiences relating to the joy of traveling and discovering new …
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 …
Continue reading “The Eight Most Beautiful Words In English?”
by Kevin Burton Christmas brings with it a combination of the most modern of gifts under the tree and the most old-timey of words used to sing about it. Merriam-Webster dictionary has compiled a list of words we seldom encounter outside of Christmas songs. We bring you more of those today, and we …
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 …
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