If ever you were going to be visited by an incorporeal creature, Halloween would be the night for it to happen. Such apparitions would have every opportunity to hide in plain sight among the ninja turtles, Jedi, fairy princesses, and superheroes traipsing from house to house begging for … [Read more...]
Some Nouns Have Too Many Plurals
Forming regular plural nouns in English is a pretty simple concept, but that's where the simplicity ends. English has so many different irregular plurals — and so many different types! There are plurals that are identical to their singular versions (sheep: sheep), plurals that change for count and … [Read more...]
Homonym, Homophone, or Homograph?
As is too often the case, the differences among three concepts — in this case homonyms, homographs, and homophones — seem simple and clear . . . until you try to explain them. Whether it's indicative of a bona fide disagreement among word people or of a historical confusion that is reflected in … [Read more...]
Confusables: Assure, Ensure, and Insure
Spellcheck probably won't help you choose correctly among assure, ensure, and insure. In fact, because of some overlap in definitions, you might have some problems yourself deciding which word is the right one, especially if you're working with historical texts. According to Etymonline, ensure … [Read more...]
Toward a More Accurate Vocabulary of Hate
Greek gives us a useful combining form for creating words about hate, but we might not be using it as often as we should. Miso- comes from misein, meaning "to hate," and it gives us a handful of highfalutin words for low-brow antipathies, like these: misogyny: hatred of women misogamy: … [Read more...]
Editing Instinct
When writing about instinct, is the adjective instinctive or instinctual? Are they synonymous, or have they differentiated? Are we just to rely on our editorial instincts to choose? Many usage mavens, including Bryan Garner and Charles Harrington Elster, consider instinctual a needless variant … [Read more...]
Picking at the Pepper Problem
I used to like spicy food much more than I do now. I was never a fanatic about it — chomping on a ghost pepper has never been on my bucket list. But there are people out there who will jump at any chance to experience new levels of mouth pain whenever they hear about a new, more powerful … [Read more...]
Are You Rifling or Riffling?
A hypothetical 400-page bill is brought forward in Congress, and voting on the bill is expected to happen in only one hour. Legislators don't have enough time to read and absorb the entire thing, so they scan through it quickly, looking for specific phrases and keywords just to get the gist of what … [Read more...]