A Mouthful of Words I’ve just returned from a first-ever visit to Yellowstone National Park and brought home a mouthful of words as souvenirs. Here are some of my favs: Big Sky I had a big dose of the big sky in all its variety: yellow sunshine, puffy white clouds, thunderheads, drizzle, downpours, double rainbows. […]
Word By Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper
“Language is one of the few common experiences humanity has.” So begins the Preface to Kory Stamper’s wonderful memoir, Word By Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries. Hanging on Stamper’s personal narrative about how she came to be a lexicographer at Merriam-Webster and what that work is like is the entertaining history of the English […]
“Fucking” is a Poor Intensifier
“Fucking” is a poor an intensifier in written non-fiction. My objection is not one of prudishness but one of good usage. I don’t approve of using “very” as an intensifier, either (or really, or so). Saying something is “fucking unbelievable” is no better than “very unbelievable”; both lack imagination and weaken one’s prose. In the […]