words
April 23, 2009
- "fall" and "precipitously"As in, "Today we saw stocks fall precipitously." For one thing, "precipitously" is way too codependent, following "fall" around like a puppy dog, as if there's no other word in the world it could modify. (I mean, even "profusely," which is way too codependent on "bleed," spends some time hanging ...
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April 12, 2009
- I am these days a big glistening salmon swimming upstream to lay my eggs, my words on paper. Heavy with insight and thoughts I seek a cool shady spot near the dancing reeds, the place where the pebbles and stones resemble wrens eggs, dappled and speckled. There in the right place, my place alone, where I am free to contemplate my position in the stream, I will allow the eddy and flow to caress me ...
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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 ...
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March 30, 2009
- Saw this in Paul Krugman's NY Times column today: Discussing the causes of that crisis, Mr. Summers pointed to things that the crisis countries lacked - and that, by implication, the United States had. These things included "well-capitalized and supervised banks" and reliable, transparent corporate accounting.The lack of suspensive hyphenation caught my attention. I would have ...
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March 19, 2009
- In the Beginning was the Word…. I have noticed the pleasure and the strain in writing the words. The pleasure to connect in the deepest part of our soul with another seems like the closest thing to God, especially when writing the words so others can understand what we have to say. Where else can we pour our hearts out and know someone is listening to our words, other ...
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March 17, 2009
- curcludgeonIt's when you get bludgeoned by a curmudgeon. I'm sure any grammarphile with grammarphobe tendencies will agree we could use such a word. I realize curbludgeon would be a more natural formation, but 1. it's too similar to bludgeon and 2. it's just not as much fun. So don't curcludgeon me about that.
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March 8, 2009
- Empty it all out. Dig deep down and throw it on the page. Scatter the words randomly onto the sheet until it becomes wrinkled and stained. Take a deep breath and stumble on-cross out one word and put another in its place. Pause. Stand back and look at it. How does it seem? Does it make any sense? Are there too many periods? Do the quotation marks seem wrong and unnecessary? Is the period in the ...
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March 4, 2009
- plumping Men may not have noticed, but "plump" has been gaining popularity as a transitive verb. Seems everywhere I turn, some youth pusher is offering to plump my business. They're hawking products that promise to "plump" my lips and "plump up" my wrinkles. Here are Google News search results for "plumping" for the last nine years (using March 4 as the ...
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March 2, 2009
- It has become ever more apparent that sometimes no matter what we say it will be the wrong thing. Perhaps the few words we write are too few, maybe they are too much but ultimately a few little letters strung together into the most rudimentary of sentences can end in a whole lot of trouble.Many famous authors have found this out for themselves without my tiny and completely underwhelming ...
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February 24, 2009
- snarkyOkay, this one is hardly scientific. But it's the best I could do given the limitations of this here Google tool.I wanted to know whether the word "snarky" had passed its prime. In my personal experience, its use peaked a few years ago and has been on the wane ever since. So I tried the following (obviously flawed) search terms and came up with some interesting results.snarky and ...
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