The most dangerous words are the ones that you think you understand. This is a trap of old books, where familiar words often hold strange meanings.
Tag: words
Redundant Redundancies
Today’s topic is redundant phrases. We have all had it drilled into us that redundancy is bad and clean, effective communication excises the pointless. We also have ingrained into us our civilization’s stock of well-worn and oft-used expressions, which did not undergo a strict vetting by licensed grammarians and therefore contains redundancies. Like Orwell’s animals,…
Fame is Fugacious
Not long ago, I took a vocabulary quiz. In the process of it, I learned two new words, avulse and fugacious. It struck me as unfortunate that I would have to look long and hard for an opportunity to use avulse, and I would probably never get a chance to use fugacious at all. They’re…
The Old Lobster Trick
To this day, I don’t know why they call it the lobster shift. They ought to call it the mental-illness shift, because when you work overnight long enough and sleep all day long enough, your skin gets bad and you’re always pale and you find you have two modes, depression and anxiety. Peggy Noonan, What…