Having an Australian accent is a mixed blessing. It sounds reassuringly normal in Australia, but can be a liability in the rest of the world. Some people love it, most people hate it, but few are unmoved by it. It always seems that no one knows what to do with Australian English. Australians often appear to be embarrassed by it; the English think it sounds like South African; South Africans think it sounds like New Zealandish; New Zealanders hate it; Americans are baffled by it; and Asians refuse to believe that it is English at all. More ... 

Each great writer holds deed to a signature space. Emily Dickinson reigns forever in an Amherst attic, Ernest Hemingway in a Paris café, William Faulkner a seedy Southern manse. Eugene O'Neill pours the sauce in an urban saloon. But two eminent authors reside in a very different neighborhood; Henry David Thoreau haunts the forest, Mark Twain the river. "You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft," proclaimed Twain's Huck Finn, and no one since Thales has been as lyrical in his affection for fresh, flowing water. Samuel Clemens even chose his nom de plume from the term that boatmen used to plumb a river's depths. More ... 

The news item is about a list of euphemisms provided by the government of Singapore. The purpose of the "new" English expressions "is to give respectable names to some professions and people with disabilities." I have not been to Singapore since it stopped issuing visas to Pakistanis after 9/11, but I am sure these expressions are now a part of Singlish, the English spoken in Singapore. Let me mention a few of these officially sanctioned euphemisms. More ... 

The story behind the word inaugurate is an intriguing one. It literally means "to take omens from the flight of birds." In ancient Rome, augurs would predict the outcome of an enterprise by the way the birds were flying. These soothsayer-magicians would tell a general whether or not to march or to do battle by the formations of the birds on the wing. They might even catch one and cut it open to observe its entrails for omens. More ... 

For the most part it refers to the irrefutable fact that you cannot argue me into enjoying the flavor of shrimp. I simply do not like shrimp, and no amount of persuasion or logic will ever convince me that I am wrong. Concerning my taste for shellfish, there can be no dispute: my palate is adamant on the point and (how's this for a mixed metaphor?) deaf to all debate on the subject. When I die, I will die detesting the flavor of lobster (it always tastes to me like what I imagine an alien from space would taste like if I caught and steamed one quickly). More ... 

The phrase order of magnitude (OOM) exists to connect the realms of the quantitative and the qualitative. It is simultaneously a measure of numerical magnitude and of importance, of degree and of kind. Because it bridges a gap between two disparate mental realms, its definition seems to flicker and shift; it has one foot in the world of mathematics and physics and the other in the philosophical and moral world, and refuses to be either one exclusively. But it is by no means ambiguous: the discomfort it sometimes causes is not due to its having an uncertain meaning, but to its forcing us to transcend the usual categories, in which a phenomenon is either a fact or a value. As a bridge between two realms, it exhibits and causes tension; since it is a bridge, tension is natural and necessary. More ... 

Earlier this year, the enterprising but naive folks behind something called the Plain English Campaign released the results of a survey that asked 5,000 people in 70 countries to name the world's most irritating phrase. At the end of the day, the phrase that annoyed people most was ... well ... "at the end of the day." More ... 

Today, propelled by some mysterious linguistic force, I decided to investigate. More ... 

— S. B. Roth More ... 

Although few people can complain of another's grammatical mistakes with impunity, that is, without revealing their own, we are hopeful that "Grumbling About Grammar" will encourage us all to pay more heed to how the language is used — by ourselves as well as by others — while bettering our ability to speak and write it.

pedalogical (pedilogical) Idiotic for pedagogical. • The beauty of a Jewish school is that it wraps up all the values both pedalogical and religious which parents want for their children into one neat convenient package. USE pedagogical. • What is there can radically change the pedalogical approaches used by teachers to reach their learners. USE pedagogical. • I was not looking for psychological, pedilogical nor philosophical discussions. USE pedagogical. • They do this by setting up institutes for professional training that teach both at the pedilogical level and at the content level for teachers. USE pedagogical.

Dictionaries have yet to list pedalogical (or pedilogical) as a "variant spelling" of pedagogical, but sham scientists (lexicographers, descriptive linguists, and others equally misguided) will likely soon begin excusing, justifying, and promoting these sham spellings. More ... 

We all know far too well how to write everyday English, but few of us know how to write elegant English — English that is expressed with music as well as meaning, style as well as substance. The point of this feature is not to suggest that people should try to emulate these examples of elegant English but to show that the language can be written with grace and polish — qualities that much contemporary writing is bereft of and could benefit from.

That enough is as good as a feast: Not a man, woman, or child in ten miles round Guildhall, who really believes this saying. The inventor of it did not believe it himself. It was made in revenge by somebody, who was disappointed of a regale. It is a vile cold-scrag-of-mutton sophism; a lie palmed upon the palate, which knows better things. If nothing else could be said for a feast, this is sufficient, that from the superflux there is usually something left for the next day. Morally interpreted, it belongs to a class of proverbs, which have a tendency to make us undervalue money. Of this cast are those notable observations, that money is not health; riches cannot purchase every thing: the metaphor which makes gold to be mere muck, with the morality which traces fine clothing to the sheep's back, and denounces pearl as the unhandsome excretion of an oyster. Hence, too, the phrase which imputes dirt to acres — a sophistry so barefaced, that even the literal sense of it is true only in a wet season. This, and abundance of similar sage saws assuming to inculcate content, we verily believe to have been the invention of some cunning borrower, who had designs upon the purse of his wealthier neighbour, which he could only hope to carry by force of these verbal jugglings. Translate any one of these sayings out of the artful metonyme which envelops it, and the trick is apparent. Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, independence, heart's ease, a man's own time to himself, are not much — however we may be pleased to scandalise with that appellation the faithful metal that provides them for us. — Charles Lamb, Popular Fallacies More ... 

Whereas a witticism is a clever remark or phrase — indeed, the height of expression — a "dimwitticism" is the converse; it is a commonplace remark or phrase. Dimwitticisms are worn-out words and phrases; they are expressions that dull our reason and dim our insight, formulas that we rely on when we are too lazy to express what we think or even to discover how we feel. The more we use them, the more we conform — in thought and feeling — to everyone else who uses them.

it's a long story It's a long story — cipher for "I don't want to tell you" — is a mannerly expression that we use to thwart the interest of a person in whom we are not much interested. More ... 

Words often ill serve their purpose. When they do their work badly, words militate against us. Poor grammar, sloppy syntax, misused words, misspelled words, and other infelicities of style impede communication and advance only misunderstanding. But there is another, perhaps less well-known, obstacle to effective communication: too many words.

make conversation chat; communicate; converse; speak; talk. • It was easy to make conversation with him. It was easy to talk with him. • He was always fair to the kids and would make conversation with them. He was always fair to the kids and would chat with them. • He never understood the reason people complained about his poor hygiene skills and his inability to make conversation. He never understood the reason people complained about his poor hygiene skills and his inability to converse. More ... 

Inadequate though they may be, words distinguish us from all other living things. Indeed, our worth is partly in our words. Effective use of language — clear writing and speaking — is a measure of our humanness. What's more, the more words we know and can correctly use, the broader will be our understanding of self, the keener our acquaintance with humankind.

calefacient (cal-ah-FAY-shunt) adj. producing warmth; heating. More ... 

Among the best written, if least read, books are those that we will be featuring each month in "On the Bookshelf." No book club selections, no best-selling authors are likely to be spoken of here. Best-selling authors, of course, are often responsible for the worst written books.

John Webster: The Duchess of Malfi More ... 

Each ten-question quiz briefly discusses a specific topic, such as history, science, literature, or philosophy. Of course, you are quizzed not on content but on grammar or usage, vocabulary or spelling, punctuation or style.

Vocabula Quiz 9  Topic: Technology  Level of difficulty: Easy More ...