Chowing down while the dogs fight over a bone of contention. I’ve spent of good deal of my life dealing with words. We all use them. At least all of us who speak or write, but even illiterate people, who may not know how to spell them, use them, and people who are unable to speak or hear must think them. I think about words and how they came to mean what they do. You use them [...] READ MORE
Once you get to the top, the only way to go is down. There’s really no need to sprint to the bottom. Baby Boomers in their sixties and seventies were taught by our parents and grandparents to work hard and be loyal. Loyalty is a two-way street, or so we were told, and employers supposedly recognized and respected this asset as exemplified by our hard work and willingness to go the extra mile. Our parents were better [...] READ MORE
Words and phrases that show your age. Uncool or rich in history and meaning? Now I’m too old to worry about whether I’m cool or not. Or is that too cool to worry about how old I am? I do know that it is still cool to use cool to mean something is, well, cool. It is one of the long-standing tidbits of slang that has lasted through multiple generations. Then again, that may not be true [...] READ MORE
Words come and go as the years go by. One of the great things about being young— as in late adolescence and well into the vague parameters of young adulthood— is you get to make up your own language and toss words and expressions your parents and grandparents are fond of onto the scrapheap. Words like scrapheap, for instance. I explored that subject a few years back in a newspaper column entitled: “Outliving a Big Chunk of [...] READ MORE
Looking at some legendarily long words that will give you writer’s cramp. I have to confess that the unrelenting, verging on overwhelming, abuses of political power have left me in a temporary state of dumbfoundedness. Now that’s a long word, unrecognized by my spell-checker and even in some dictionaries. But it is legitimate and means being dumbfounded or amazed to the point of being unresponsive, flabbergasted or gobsmacked. My spell-checker doesn’t recognize the last one either, but [...] READ MORE
