What do you call the people you work with?
Nothing nasty I hope. Based on what I hear a lot lately, there’s a good chance you call them work colleagues. But here’s the thing:
Why not just call them colleagues? Continue reading
Work Colleagues
language errors
On the Scent
The verb sentire in Italian is an interesting one. I’ve come across it a few times recently on Duolingo, meaning to hear. I could see how it was related to English words associated with feelings like (to) sense, sensitive, sentiment(al) etc., but found it curious that in Italian it seemed to be used only to refer to one sense. Seemed to anyway… Continue reading
Seal Armpit Delivers Inconvenience, Aches
You never what you’re going to find on the internet, do you? I sometimes have a look at the comments on this blog that are marked as spam. Partly because the occasional genuine comment gets thrown in there, but mainly out of curiosity.
Curiosity as to why those responsible might think I’d fall for their obvious tricks, and curiosity about how successful they are. Mostly though, curiosity about the interesting forms of English contained therein. Take this recent comment, for example: Continue reading
Citizen and Subject
While writing about the word citizen, via denizen recently, I naturally thought of the word citizen in contrast to subject. Naturally, when describing people, they’re quite different. Continue reading
Ladies’ Day
Glamour! Sophistication! Punctuation! Isn’t this what you think of when you hear the phrase Ladies’ Day?
Ladies’ Day is a common aspect of horse-racing festivals, and today is Ladies’ Day at the Galway Horse-Racing Festival. As seems to be the tradition, it’s a warm day of greasy rain and even greasier teenage boys in oversized suits drinking during the day.
I’m not a fan, suffice it to say, but each to their own. Anyway, one of the most interesting things about Ladies’ Day is Ladies’ Day: that is, the phrase itself, and how almost everyone has to stop and think for a second about how to spell it.
That’s all down to the apostrophe of course. Is it Ladys, or Lady’s, or Ladies, or Ladies’? Well obviously it’s Ladies’, because that’s what I’ve been using from the start, but why is it Ladies’? Continue reading
Uninterested or Disinterested?
What? I already told you, remember!?
I’m usually pretty understanding when it comes to commonly-confused words, but this one annoys me, simply because of how I often I see people get it wrong (almost always using disinterested when they mean uninterested).
OK, so explaining the difference between the two words is pretty straightforward, but why does one begin with dis-, and one with un-? Continue reading
Money, Monies, or Moneys?
I’ll take any to be honest, I’m not fussy. Ah, but linguistically, which is best? Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 