writing

The Versatile Blogger Award

Niall O'Donnell 12 Comments

Thank you Lise for nominating me for the Versatile Blogger Award! You should head to her blog Lushtivity to read her great variety of posts on books, beauty, games, and lifestyle. With all those different topics, she’s a worth winner of this award! I’m not sure how versatile I am, except perhaps in the sense that I might sometimes write about different words, or different grammar points.

Regardless, here I am, so, per the rules of the award, I’ll endeavour to think of seven interesting facts about myself:

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What Makes a Superhero Super?

Niall O'Donnell 9 Comments

As I alluded to yesterday, I recently saw Spider-man Homecoming with my nephews. It made me think again about superhero names. I touched on them briefly before, thinking about how straightforward they are. The majority of the most popular ones are simple compound nouns, featuring an adjective or noun that defines the character, followed by man or woman (or girl). Spider-man. Batman. Superman. Wonder Woman, etc. The practical, pragmatic explanation for this is to make the characters easily recognisable, and not confused for a rival publisher’s characters. That’s why, after all, Spider-man has his hyphen.

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Holding out for a Hero

Niall O'Donnell 11 Comments

When writing about James Joyce last month, I got to thinking about the word hero. Two things made me think about it: the fact that an early draft of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was known as Stephen Hero, and how often I referred to Leopold Bloom as the hero of the novel Ulysses.

On the surface, it seems like a fairly straightforward word. You can think of its meaning pretty easily, I’m sure: someone brave, with exceptional abilities. Someone we can look up to. And this has always been the meaning of the word. It comes from the Greek ἥρως (hērōs), meaning protector or defender, and was often specifically used in Ancient Greek myths to refer to heroes of divine ancestry such as Heracles. So, not so different from how we use it today. Except, as I alluded to in the first paragraph, when we use it as a literary term.

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Liebster Award

Niall O'Donnell 17 Comments

I have to say a big thank you to Liz for nominating me for this lovely award. It’s a great honour, and before I say anything else, I highly recommend you check out her great blog at Do the Thing, as she recounts her experiences crossing items off her bucket list.

I believe I’ve done this before, but it’s nice to have a different style of post from my usual. Plus, this will likely be a little shorter, and I don’t have so much time to write this evening, though I do still have the itch.

Ok, the rules.

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I React to: YouTube English!!

Niall O'Donnell 10 Comments

Earlier this afternoon, on my lunch break, I came upon the following article: “21 Insane Ways Celebrities Get (and Stay) Rich.” I can’t really recommend it. Some of the items are mildly interesting, but could hardly be described as insane, unless you consider selling a business at a profit insane. I did find one thing curious though, and that was the following sentence about Jake Paul, who is apparently a YouTube star:

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“Fill in” or “Fill out?”

QuoteNiall O'Donnell 12 Comments

Thinking yesterday about the question of whether or not we can use in and out together, and about phrasal verbs, made me think of something else. Have you ever noticed that fill in and fill out mean the same thing?

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Come in out of the Rain

Niall O'Donnell 12 Comments

Earlier this evening, while WhatsApping with my friend about staying in or going out, I tapped out the following phrase: best to stay in out of the rain (we’re staying in). I didn’t think anything about it, until I happened to glance at it as I was putting my phone down. My eye zoomed in on the middle, specifically on these two words: …in out…. Hang on a second, I said, that can’t be!

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