Writing yesterday’s post, I came to a point where I wanted to use the phrase racking their brain. A few words before I got to the point where I had to type it though, I paused: was it wracking their brain?
I’ve never been sure how to spell it, and it’s not something I often have to write, so I never had to look it up. At least until yesterday anyway, so to satisfy all our curiosity, here’s the answer…
The above photo is of a box I came across recently in a shop in Liège, and is a classic example of how literal translation will usually lead you astray.
Shine bright like a diamond,
– Rihanna, 2012.
How do you feel about the adjective brilliant? It seems to be a bit divisive. Like the word awesome, there are those who feel that it’s cheapened by being used as a general adjective of quality, to indicate that something is very good.
I understand that point of view, and I’ve argued previously that sometimes a strong adjective is just too strong for the situation, and a nice simple adjective often works well. That being said, the sheer positivity of words like awesome and brilliant can be infectious.
And while brilliant is now firmly established as a synonym for great, this is actually a fairly recent development.
“God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends, that plague thee thus!-
Why looks’t thou so?”-With my cross-bow
I shot the ALBATROSS.
This is one of the more unusual English idioms. It means a very heavy, psychological burden.
But why an albatross?
Continuing a vague theme about gender in language, I want to look a little at the few gendered words we have in English.
I mentioned recently that actor/actress is still a distinction we often make. There’s waiter/waitress too. And that’s basically it.
There are some specifically female forms that have relatively recently fallen out of favour. Stewardess and manageress, for example. Generally though, we’ve been content to use gender-neutral terms.
Today is 11 November, Armistice Day, on which we commemorate the end of the First World War. Or, World War I. That’s how we refer to the conflict now, but it’s actually had surprisingly many names.
…brevity is the soul of wit… – William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Twitter again. Now we can compose tweets of 280 characters on Twitter, double the previous limit. And I have to ask: why?
English-Language Thoughts 