Lots of animals have horns. Cows have horns. Rhinoceroses, goats, antelopes, all have horns.
Buildings though, generally don’t have horns. Continue reading
The Horn of Plenty
linguistic evolution
L’Uomo Pipistrello (Italian-Language Thoughts)
A quick update: you’ve probably been on the edge of your seat the last week or so, wondering if I’d find out if there’s an Italian equivalent of calling Batman The Bat or The Batman.
Well, I’ve been slowly making my through Batman: Anno Uno, and finally, close to the end, I’ve discovered the answer. Continue reading
Mocking
It’s strange that we live in a world in which I can write that the President of the United States mocked an alleged sexual-assault victim, and that’s not a lie. Continue reading
Flotsam and Jetsam
These two always go together, don’t they? Whether used literally or figuratively, they basically form a binomial pair, an expression made up of two words commonly joined by and or or. But what exactly is the difference between flotsam and jetsam? Continue reading
Sonder
You might have come across this word recently, possibly tweeted by a dictionary or trivia account as a word of the day. It refers to the profound and sudden realisation that complete strangers have rich and complex inner lives.
It’s a popular word to share because it often elicits two reactions: Wow, that’s something I’ve experienced now and then but never really thought about, and other people experience it too, cool!, and Wow, I didn’t know there was a word for that! It’s not surprising that a lot of people didn’t know about this word though, considering it’s only six years old. Continue reading
Indifferent
I came across this word while reading today, and I noticed that it’s a little unusual. We usually think of in- as a negative prefix, making a word the opposite of the word that follows the prefix. But indifferent isn’t the opposite of different.
Or is it? Continue reading
Straightforward
While writing yesterday, I paused to think of le mot juste, and it turned out that straightforward was juste the mot I needed. I paused again, then, to think a little more about that word, straightforward.
It’s quite a straightforward word, isn’t it? Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 