self-talk
n.— «Social workers said a practice called “self-talk” can help people cope. Ruthanne Faught with Women Strength in Peoria said, “If your self talk is this is ok, it maybe only temporary, maybe I need to look at taking the bus, maybe I could car pool, maybe I could ride a bicycle. It’s that self talk that calms you down.”» —“Gas Spike Causing Tempers to Spike” by Brock Spencer in Peoria WHOI-TV (Creve Coeur, Illinois) Sept. 1, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...