The language is changing all the time, and while that’s annoying to purists and traditionalists (me, sometimes), it’s also tremendously entertaining and delightful to fans (me, the rest of the time). New coinages perfectly suited to a moment, situation, or social group may or may not stand the test of time (gag me with a …
Category Archive: Words
Feb 20
The best day of my life! I could be happier!
“I could care less,” when you mean that you care not at all and, thus, couldn’t actually care less, has been a wrinkle in my sock since I was a child. Here’s one of the best tutorials on how to stop saying this wrong, by a wonderful English comedian, Dave Mitchell. And as a bonus, …
Jan 29
Not the greatest of e’s
It puzzles me to hear the odd way people sometimes pronounce the word “processes.” They say “processees,” as if it were the name of a Greek hero, mighty Processes, friend of Hercules and Achilles, slayer of Parentheses and Apostrophes. There are, of course, words that come from Greek and do make their plurals with “ees” sounds, …
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