Colin in West Hartford, Connecticut, says his teenagers admiringly use the word dirty to describe a great athlete, and use filthy to describe one who’s especially talented. Although this positive usage of originally negative words may sound...
Hugh in Newton, Massachusetts, noticed two very different senses of quarry, represented in John Singer Sargent’s painted stone quarries and Gustave Courbet’s The Quarry, with its fallen stag. They’re different words. The excavation sense goes back...