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: estival… To me the word estival looks like a typo. Didn’t they mean festival and just forget the F? But, no, it’s […]
What does ‘estival’ mean? 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: liana… I had never heard or seen the word liana before reading the marvellous Maggie O’Farrell memoir I am I am I
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: portmanteau… When I recently read the word portmanteau, I mistakenly thought of a porte cochère. The latter term refers to a covered entrance
What’s a ‘portmanteau’? 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: auscultation… Many friends and colleagues had recommended the 2011 novel The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht to me but I never picked
What does ‘auscultation’ mean? 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: rime… I had never read anything written by the darkly comic Danish author Dorothe Nors. But when her 2017 novel Mirror, Shoulder,
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: ruction… An unsparing novel that addresses and denunciates the sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Ireland, A History of Loneliness, by
What’s a ‘ruction’? 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: ineludible… I often like first novels because, while sometimes flawed, they often display an edge or a nerve that’s sometimes missing from
What does ‘ineludible’ mean? 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: epiphanic… When I recently learned the meaning of the word epiphanic, I slapped myself over the head for not having figured it out
What does ‘epiphanic’ mean? 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: dovecote…. When I read the word dovecote in John LeCarré’s memoir Pigeon Tunnel, I had no idea how appropriate it was. Here
What’s a ‘dovecote’? 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: coeval… When I read the novel The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon, I enountered more than my usual number of new-to-me words. One
What does ‘coeval’ mean? Read More »
