You might hear this sound quite a bit over the next few days. Perhaps someone might be trying to give you a scare. Or perhaps they might be expressing disapproval at your choice of Hallowe’en costume. But why do we always use boo to frighten or to show disapproval? Continue reading
Yesterday I talked about why we say take a break. But it’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? When you take a break, at work for example, you’re breaking your day into different parts. EASY.
What might be more interesting is comparing the word break with the word brake (as featured on your car or bike). Obviously these words are homophones (they sound identical) and are often confused for each other when people write, but they actually have more in common than most realise… Continue reading
A neat little phrase, in that the two verbs go well together in terms of meaning, but also how they look and sound. But is that just a coincidence? Continue reading
I read something interesting in Italian the other day:
Questo libro mi sta piacendo un casino. (I really like this book a lot).
I understood everything except un casino, though the meaning was still clear. Looking up un casino, I saw that the first meaning for it was a mess. Continue reading
I already told you about this word, whose meaning you probably knew about anyway: it’s one of those interesting bits of trivia that’s often thrown about. Continue reading
Springfield is a particularly common toponym in the English language, especially in the United States. Continue reading
This line, the final one of William Carlos William’s poem “Pastoral,” has always been fixed in mind.
It’s an effective and arresting line, poetically speaking, which is the main reason. But it was also the first time I’d seen the word import used in that way. Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 