More Dishing on Dis
Continuing my dissertation on dis words whose roots are no longer part of our vocabulary, consider...
Head toward the Hills
It doesn’t seem like it should be such a big deal whether you use toward or towards in a sentence like this:
Dishing on Dis
Ever since I discovered that ruth, meaning compassionate or merciful, was an antonym for ruthless as well as a woman’s name I’ve been on the lookout for other words with little-known or rarely-used roots. As it turns out, there are quite a number of words with the prefix dis that have little or an obsolete relationship to their roots. To use the current slang version of the prefix, they have been dissed.
Predominately predominates
In Twelve Years a Slave, Solomon Northrup writes about his wife’s mixed blood ethnicity, “It is difficult to tell whether the red, white, or black predominates.”
Word of the Week – limelight
Awards season is about to begin. The Golden Globes airs Sunday. The NFL crowns a champion in a few weeks, and in March we get the Oscars. All these events put folks in the spotlight.
Can We All Just Agree?
I think we can all agree that subjects and verbs need to agree with one another.
Have a lollapalooza new year
It’s a new year and a re-start on my Word of the Week posts. Why not start off with a neologism—a made-up word. One that I hope characterizes the year ahead: lollapalooza.