We can’t ignore this one. This is thought to be Shakespeare’s birthday, although no one know for sure. The Writer’s Almanac for today (April 23, 2020, https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-writers-almanac?) has an excellent summary of his life, better than anything I could write, so I’m just going to copy it here. “It’s the assumed birthday of William Shakespeare (books by this
Are you getting tired of staring at your walls and need something to cheer you up? Me, too. So I did an Internet search for ‘silver-lining sayings’ and stumbled upon Wise Old Sayings: Words To Live By (https://www.wiseoldsayings.com/silver-lining-quotes/). Here are the quotes I especially like from the list of 30 that popped up — “Every
April 14, 1828 saw publication of Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language. According to The Writer’s Almanac of April 14, 2020 (https://www.spreaker.com/show/the-writers-almanac? ) — “Webster put together the dictionary because he wanted Americans to have a national identity that wasn’t based on the language and ideas of England. And the problem wasn’t just
In the course of being quarantined and following everything that was happening around the world, I ran across some interesting explanations for the origin of the term itself. The actual word “quarantine” is derived from the Italian quaranta, meaning “forty.” It is traced back to the language of Venice, Italy in the 14th and 15th centuries. During
We use a lot of expressions in everyday speech, and their origins are frequently lost to history. But I’ve found an interesting exception. A friend recently asked me if I thought the coronavirus pandemic is a black swan event. This was a new one; I’d never heard that phrase before. I went scrambling to the
You may have seen the expression “bleeding heart” used occasionally in political columns. Actually, it has a surprisingly long history in Western literature. According to Merriam-Webster, the phrase first appeared as “he felte his herte blede” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th-century poem Troilus and Criseyde. It also took on a religious meaning as an image of the
At the high school where I substitute teach, an English teacher has a poster for the National Sarcasm Society. Their symbol is a jackass and their slogan is “Like We Need Your Support.” Actually, there is a Sarcasm Society (https://www.sarcasmsociety.com/) and there’s plenty of “National Sarcasm Society” merchandise available on Amazon.com. I suppose this can
We all know that English is a flexible language, as in google becoming a verb. Yet some say it needs to be even more flexible — there is a word for being behind in your work (backlog), but what’s the word for forging ahead? A more pertinent example is the quest for a gender-neutral, third-person
How many words are there in the English language? I’ve seen estimates ranging from 400,000 to as many as a million if you count all the scientific and technical terms, although a quick Google search says the Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use (https://wordcounter.io/blog/how-many-words-are-in-the-english-language/). No matter who is counting, a
One way to keep up with what’s happening is to follow word trends, According to Merriam-Webster, here are some of the words people have been looking up recently. Kangaroo Court — Inquiries jumped 11,000% on October 8 after President Trump described the congressional impeachment hearings as “a totally compromised kangaroo court.” Merriam-Webster’s definition is either “a