All Verbal Energy
- On the rebound after a deeply moving experience.
A household move reminds the Monitor's language columnist how short words can be the most intense.
- The self-titled album and other creative wonders
Some concise idioms built on the notion of 'self' may be a bit too concise for the Monitor’s language columnist.
- 'Expatriotism': the last refuge of a scoundrel?
Two senators going after Facebook cofounder Eduardo Saverin for taxes seem to need a little help with their spelling.
- How less is more – in more than one idiom
Architecture and language share some surprising similarities.
- The kudzu of global business languages
A call for companies to require English of all their employees seems insensitive – and unnecessary.
Motorists are advised to seek alternativesWhen deciding on alternate vs. alternative, what choice do you have?
- Words that work their way into our minds
Researchers at Cornell University try to figure out what makes for memorable quotes.
- Teasing out the truth about wool and data
A verb with ancient roots turns out to be surprisingly useful to refer to making sense of tangled masses of information.
- The American Society of Paperless News?
The shift away from newsprint has required new titles for journalism organizations.
- A really big story told in only 100 words
A linguist chooses the stories of 100 individual words to tell the larger story of English.
- Elbowing our way to better writing
A new book argues that people would write better if they connected better with their true 'mother tongue': spoken language.
- People, companies, elephants - it's all relative.
Our choice of pronouns gives clues about how we think about humans, animals, and corporations.
- Words whose job descriptions have narrowed
Is a woman in a 'fetching' outfit really like a puppy with a stick? How some words seem to travel in very small circles.
- The stickler's dilemma
How much do we let a word's origins limit our usage of that word, and do we pretend we can't see down to the roots of a word?
- Working out just what a 'piece of work' is
Two contradictory usages of the same idiom prompt the Monitor's language columnist to do a little research.
Not just what we pack, but what we carryLuggage and baggage seem to mean the same thing, but it's the latter that's being lugged about on the campaign trail this year.
- Putting the accent in the right place
Even in an era of globalization, regional accents are still with us.
- Wow! Some words are, like, really old!
Even words bearing the stamp of one particular era often go back surprisingly deep into earlier times.
Why did President Obama double up on 'double down'?The Monitor's language columnist takes issue with President Obama's use of a gambling idiom in his State of the Union message.
- Schemes on Wall Street and in public policy
It's too bad 'scheme' has such a bad reputation in American English, because we could certainly use a synonym for 'program.'
