It’s hard enough to get a new word into the dictionary. But what happens when lawmakers get involved? New Jersey legislators passed a resolution as part of an anti-bullying campaign urging dictionary companies to adopt the word upstander. It...
Plenty of people write to dictionary editors asking for words to be added. It almost never works. But what if politicians make a special request? To urge adoption of the term upstander, as in “the opposite of bystander,” to honor those...
If you think back on all the words you’ve looked up in the past year, only to turn around and forget their definitions immediately, Martha’s New Year’s resolution sounds like a no-brainer: be a little more mindful, and take care to...
Is there a word you keep having to look up in the dictionary, no matter how many times you’ve looked it up before? Maybe it’s time for a mnemonic device. And: a listener shares a letter from Kurt Vonnegut himself, with some reassuring...
page 75 n.— «In a typical Hollywood screenplay, there comes a moment just before the third act when the protagonist is faced with certain defeat. It is the part of the film in which the bad guys gain crucial ground after a series of...
bright-line n.— «Bright-line guidance is what’s called for, not blocks to the progress of enforcement cases or their resolution.» —“SEC’s Cox Tightens Reins on Enforcement Division (Update1)” by Otis...