For 341 years, the poets laureate of Britain have all been male. That just changed with the appointment of Britain’s new poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy. Her work has been described as “dealing with the darkest turmoil and the lightest...
Why is it that what you say to your family and what they hear are different? If you say “no,” your child hears “maybe,” and if you say “maybe,” she hears “ask again and again,” and “yes” is...
“You look like the wreck of the Hesperus!” It means you look “disheveled, ragged, dirty, hung over, or otherwise less than your best.” It may sound like an odd phrase, but it made perfect sense to generations of...
We recommend books that make great gifts for language lovers, talk about footwear called go-aheads, and look further into going commando. Also, was the 2008 election a historic event or an historic event?
Grant gives a brief review of the new third edition of Paul Dickson’s The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, all 974 pages and 4.5 pounds of it. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Baseball Dictionary” You’re...
The second edition of the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus is chock-full of synonyms, of course, but what makes it special are the essays and usage notes by authors such as Simon Winchester, David Lehman, Zadie Smith, and David Foster...