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: suborned… I’d heard the word a million or so times (probably in every episode of Law & Order I ever watched) but I […]
What does ‘suborned’ 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: shambolic…. When I read the word shambolic in the a memoir by Steve Jobs’ daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, I knew immediately what she
What does ‘shambolic’ 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: serried…. My husband is reading the 1950 book Escape to Adventure, by Fitzroy Maclean. Not quite my cup of tea, the 419-page book
What does ‘serried’ 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: daedal…. You might know Daedalus as the prisoner who fashioned wings of feathers and wax to escape from the island of Crete
What does ‘daedal’ 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: rick…. My father grew up on a farm but I was born a city girl. As a result, I had never heard
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: prelapsarian…. It was the headline that grabbed my attention. “How to Write a Bestseller,” promised the blog post written by Adam O’Fallon
What does ‘prelapsarian’ 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: tignon… If you had said the word tignon to me, I wouldn’t have been able to guess its meaning. But, encountering it
What’s a ‘tignon’? 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: pentimento…. Like many people, I was obsessed with the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings in 2018 and the riveting testimony of Christine
What does ‘pentimento’ 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: belfry…. Of course, I know that a belfry is the part of a bell tower or steeple in which bells are housed.
What’s the origin of the word ‘belfry’? 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: recursion… What happens when medical diagnoses become automated? That was the question that physician and writer Siddhartha Mukherjee (author of the superb
What does the word ‘recursion’ mean? Read More »
