The first part of the title of this post is the title of an article I came across yesterday on the Culture of the BBC website. I thought it would be interesting, and wondered in what way they might be killing the English language. I was quite disappointed then, to read it and find out, as I’d expected, they’re not killing it at all.
To develop a theme of translating from Latin, I want to take a quick look at this phrase today.
-Oh man, he’s not going to tell us we’ve been using this wrong too, is he? He’s not going to take this inspirational phrase away from us!?
No no, not at all!
Well, maybe a little…
It’s a pretty straightforward answer actually: one of those cases where when you see the steps between A and F, it makes sense.
Poisonous, definitely poisonous. That is, I’d much rather encounter a poisonous animal than a venomous one. Why? Let me explain…
It’s September, and that always makes me think of the names of the months. September of course, is the ninth month of the year, but the name might make you think it’s the seventh, if you know your Latin.
I think I became aware of the word trending a few years ago, whenever it began to creep outside of Twitter, as I’ve only recently started to dip my toes in the water of the Twittersphere. My first thought was that the word seemed to mean popular, but that there must be some more specific meaning to it. In time, I told myself, that meaning would become clear.
What’s the singular form of the word species? Let’s say for example, that I want to say the following:
There are many different species of snake around the world.
That’s OK, I’m referring to multiple species so of course it has to be plural. But what if I want to be more specific, and say something like:
English-Language Thoughts 