Judy Hagey Editor
Write Justified
If you live in one of the early caucus or primary states, I’d wager you’re growing irritated with the number and tenor of the political ads. If you’re a political junkie, maybe you’re just annoyed by them. If you’ve begun muting them, they’ve clearly become an aggravation.
One of the fascinating aspects, and for wordsmiths advantages, of the English language are the multiple synonyms for some words. While they may not all have the same degree of meaning or intensity, they certainly give a writer some options.
The playbill identified the high school student as duel enrolled at the local college.
Humor is usually a good way to make a point. And this picture makes the point I needed to make with a recent client who had difficulty making the distinction between deluded and diluted. Yet another pair of words that sound alike, but should not be used interchangeably.
When he was young, our oldest son sang out “homey, homey,” whenever we pulled into the driveway from an out-of-town trip. I use that rather homely introduction to home in on the Word of the Week.
When is the last time someone called you a scintillating conversationalist?
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.
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.
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.
Referees and umpires call them; athletes deny them; politicos charge them: flagrant violations or infractions of the rules. These are the offenses that are obvious even to the armchair spectator. They are disgraceful, monstrous, immoral. They are glaring—meaning they shine in the harsh light to which they are exposed—an appropriate synonym since the original meaning of the Latin flagrāre was to burn, blaze.
