A remark that’s critical of oneself might be described as self-deprecating. Surprisingly, though, before the 1940s, such a remark was properly said to be self-depreciating. In Garner’s Modern English Usage (Bookshop|Amazon), grammarian Bryan Garner notes that the use of these terms has flipped over time. Though long viewed as incorrect, self-deprecating is now 50 times more common than self-depreciating. This is part of a complete episode.
If you start the phrase when in Rome… but don’t finish the sentence with do as the Romans do, or say birds of a feather… without adding flock together, you’re engaging in anapodoton, a term of rhetoric that refers to the...
There are many proposed origins for the exclamation of surprise, holy Toledo! But the most likely one involves not the city in Ohio, but instead Toledo, Spain, which has been a major religious center for centuries in the traditions of both Islam and...
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