The wealth of polysemous words in English may be the bane of foreign learners, but the effortless ease with which they can be used to create humor and irony makes them the mainstay of subeditors, songwriters, ad people — everyone in fact who needs to think up attention-catching language. Puns, paragrams, and other forms of word play are pressed into service anywhere and everywhere — book titles and newspaper headlines, product and store names, billboards and T-shirts, stickers and badges. More ... 

"Hello" is such a characteristic American greeting that, back when I was a child in Korea, it was our name for Americans. It was, after all, the first sound out of the GIs' mouths when they saw anyone. Now that I am a professor with twenty years of academic inquiry behind me, I turn again to the question of why Americans say "Hello" and not "Good day" or its many counterparts — "Bon jour," "Guten Tag," "Buon giorno," "G'day" — to greet each other; and I do this because my inquiry into the origins of symbols and folk meanings seems constantly to skirt around the profound meanings of the utterly mundane. More ... 

With few exceptions, the last words of history's great players have been about as interesting and uplifting as a phone book. We may expect pearls of profundity and motivational aphorism from our expiring artists, philosophers, and world leaders, but more often we are left with dry-as-dust clichés. But is it fair to expect deep insights into life's mysteries when the dying clearly have other things on their mind — hell, for instance, or unspeakable pain? More ... 

How many school children now read the most important book — or collection of books — ever published in English? Very few, I suspect. The King James Bible, like The Odyssey and The Iliad of Homer, is an astonishing and timeless account of a mythology that has touched, eased, and educated generation after generation for thousands of years. It underpins our literature, language, culture, and thought across the entire English-speaking world. More ... 

Some men take pride in their family name,
Some boast of skills acquired years before,
Some bask in other's eyes, in new found fame,
Some flaunt their wealth, their fame and more,
And each according to his way takes pleasure
In what exalts him high above the crowd.
But these things for me are not a measure
Of my worth. What is I hardly say aloud: 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.

irrelevant Misused for irreverent. • It was full of irrelevant fun almost to the point of Marx Brothers-style of antics, with a small dose of the horrors of war thrown in. USE irreverent. [Cine-Rhama] • "Vancouver: Secrets of the City": An irrelevant look at the lesser-known side of British Columbia's largest city. USE irreverent. [Western Canada Travel] • Andy Armstrong takes an irrelevant look at motoring and motorsport. USE irreverent. [Wigton Motor Club] • His irrelevant style of humour is both witty and makes us think of how we see ourselves. USE irreverent. [The Farside Gallery]

Irrelevant means not relating to the subject; not pertinent. Irreverent means lacking reverence, disrespectful; critical of what is generally accepted; satirical. 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.

The world is waiting for a new faith — especially the youth of the world is waiting for a new faith. The old institutions, the old parties, are dead at the roots; they receive no refreshment. The young men and women stand apart, indifferent, inactive. But do not let us mistake their indifference for apathy, their inactivity for laziness. Intellectually, they are very wide awake. But they have rejected our abstract slogans and the hollow institutions in which old men gibber about freedom, democracy and culture. They don't want freedom if it means the freedom to exploit their fellow men; they don't want democracy if it means the ridiculous bagmen of Westminster; they don't want culture if it means the intellectual dope of our academies and universities. They want to get rid of the profiteers, and the advertising men, the petty tyrannical bureaucrats and the screaming journalists, the clubmen and the still too numerous flock of rentiers, forever cackling over their threatened nest-eggs. They want a world that is morally clean and socially just, naturally productive and aesthetically beautiful. And they know they won't get it from any of the existing parties, from any of the existing political systems. They hate fascism, they recoil from communism, and they despise democracy. They are groping towards a new faith, a new order, a new world. They are not a party and never will be a party: they have no name and will perhaps never have a name. But they will act, and onto the ruins of war they will cast the tarnished baubles and stale furnishings of those parliaments which brought death and despair to two successive generations of young men. — Herbert Read, The Politics of the Unpolitical 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.

(a) piece of cake Evoking only the silliest of images, a piece of cake ought to tell us that those who use it have nothing serious to say, and perhaps little thoughtful to think. • Choosing the menu for the wedding reception isn't always a piece of cake. REPLACE WITH easy. • Setting up a Palm device to use GoType! is a piece of cake. REPLACE WITH simplicity itself. At my high school, preparing for college is not a piece of cake. REPLACE WITH effortless. 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.

in a (the) ... sense -(al)ly; delete. • In a broad sense, office automation is the incorporation of technology to help people manage information. Broadly, office automation is the incorporation of technology to help people manage information. • Although there is a significant relationship in a statistical sense, the association is not strong. Although there is a significant statistical relationship, the association is not strong. • I don't mean this in a pejorative sense. I don't mean this pejoratively. • There was really nothing which could be called communication in any genuine sense. There was really nothing which could be called genuine communication. 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.

minutia (mi-NOO-shee-ah) n. a small or minor detail. More ... 

Each month, "Oddments and Miscellanea" will focus on a particular matter of faulty grammar, slipshod syntax, or improper punctuation. This month's admonition:

Use the possessive pronoun, not the personal pronoun, before verbal nouns ending in ing. 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.

Jane Austen: Emma More ... 

Metic (Greek metoikos, meta+oikos "change dwelling") did indeed refer to a legal resident alien in Athens — and in other Greek poleis. More ...