dictionaries
August 24, 2009
- short and shriftOn some level, I like the expression short shrift. But I just can't condone such unhealthy codependency. Like trove and amok, shrift is devoted to a partner that doesn't return the loyalty. On any given day, short can be seen running around all over town with everything from sell to order cook to man's disease.This case of codependency is so bad that shrift has pretty much lost ...
- Continue Reading » 3 Comments
July 10, 2009
- The Americans did it with their phonetic spellings. India gobbled their burgers and even the Oxford-educated returned with American accents, forget those on a vacation rolling their tongues going khurrie while aching for a spicy curry. I am in no hurry, but Kolkata schools have decided that the Oxford English dictionary can go take a walk and S can comfortably be replaced with a Z. But, then, why ...
- Continue Reading » 6 Comments
July 3, 2009
- Re-reading the definitions, I've decided that maybe the Los Angeles Times made the wrong call when they referred to several different types of news media as "mediums." (Maybe they were too hasty, as was I in interpreting the meaning of all this.) Here's the full definition from the Times' go-to dictionary, Webster's New World. Note that it offers separate definitions for the plural of ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
July 3, 2009
- An LA Times story today reports: "Two senior Los Angeles Times editors were given new responsibilities Thursday as part of an effort to create a 24-hour newsroom serving multiple mediums. "Now, back in my day, starry-eyed wannabe wordsmiths were taught that the the plural of "medium" is "media." Yes, we knew, dictionaries grudgingly allowed "mediums" as ...
- Continue Reading » 5 Comments
April 7, 2009
- oughtIn his Los Angeles Times column today, Michael Hiltzik writes, "Housing and easy money are unlikely to be the engines of growth in the Twenty-tens that they were in the Twenty-oughts." And, in doing so, he stirred up the mush of information I carry around in my head -- a shockingly large portion of which traces its origins to "Simpsons" episodes. You see, Grampa Simpson ...
- Continue Reading » 5 Comments
February 10, 2009
- A colleague just asked me: Is it "the great outdoors are" or "the great outdoors is"? And I'm none too happy with what then transpired.Webster's New World and American Heritage online give no instruction on whether the noun takes a singular or plural verb. Dictionary.com and Merriam Webster online do. They both say it takes the singular verb: "The outdoors is a wonderful ...
- Continue Reading » 9 Comments
February 2, 2009
- harassment NPR's Day to Day had a story this morning about widespread harassment of women in Cairo. The reporter pronounced it HAR-as-ment, inspiring me to (finally) get around to checking this:Webster's New World College Dictionary says you can pronounce harass with the stress on the first or second syllable, but its first choice is HAR-as. Interestingly, for the noun form, it offers only one ...
- Continue Reading » 4 Comments
January 29, 2009
- From my January 27 column on tips for using the dictionary:Is it “I have drunk my coffee” or “I have drank my coffee”? Do you dissociate from something, or dissociate with it? Does “scallop” rhyme with “gallop” or with “trollop”?Most people find questions like these downright terrifying. Not only don’t they know the answers, but they have no clue how to find them. When posed ...
- Continue Reading » 15 Comments
November 18, 2008
- It's in the dictionary = 23,800 hitsIt's in a dictionary = 88 hitsIn September, in a Mediabistro class I sometimes teach, I mentioned some disagreements between dictionaries. Students were shocked. They hadn't known that dictionaries disagreed with each other. They especially hadn't known that two dictionaries containing the name "Webster" — such as "Merriam-Webster" and ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
September 11, 2008
- My friend and fellow Red Room author Stewart Florsheim recently had his fine book of poetry, A Short Fall from Grace, featured in Pedestal Magazine, in a thorough and insightful review by Alice Osborn. Early on, Ms. Osborn declared Stewart a “master of the ekphrastic poem…” which sent at least two of us rushing off to our dictionaries. Alas, nothing there. Not in the Random House, the ...
- Continue Reading » 0 Comments
