Have you ever completed the Word Power feature in Reader’s Digest? I’m not much interested in such games – I don’t even do crosswords! – but I am committed to increasing my own vocabulary. Why? Because if I know more words, I’ll be able to read more fluently. But even more important, I’ll be able to write better. Knowing lots of words allows me – and you — to be more precise in writing. In my word-of-the-week feature I share a word with you that I’ve discovered in my own reading.
Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: flibbertigibbet… Here is a novel about four college classmates — an artist, an architect, a lawyer and an actor —who move to New York and support […]
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: scabrous I finished the novel Hot Milk by Deborah Levy (pictured above) last week and can’t say I much liked it. Despite glowing reviews
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: manumission…. I grew up on the west coast of Canada, where our prejudice tends to be displayed towards Asian, South-Asian or First
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word — or, today, phrase — of the week. Today’s phrase: Tarpeian Rock…. Two years ago, I stood near the Tarpeian Rock, and I didn’t even know it was
What is the ‘Tarpeian Rock’? Read More »
Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: hotchpotch… I picked up the book Spill, Simmer, Falter, Wither by Sara Baume on the shelf of my local library mainly because it was
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: portcullis… I have certain gaps in my reading and one of the large ones is that I’ve never read any Barbara Tuchman. (I’ve
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: fo’c’s’le… I read the novel Fifteen Dogs by Andre Alexis because a friend highly recommended it and, to be honest, because it had won
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: ontogeny… I discovered Ms Magazine when I was a teenager in the 1970s and I’ve long been interested in the work of Gloria Steinem. This
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: feuilleton. I began my working life in the newspaper business so, honestly, I should have known what the word feuilleton meant. But when
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Reading time: Less than 1 minute Increase your vocabulary and you’ll make your writing much more precise. That’s why I provide a word of the week. Today’s word: attar… I had long associated the word attar with scent, but I didn’t know its meaning any further than that and would have been
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