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I Love Being Fierce and the Power of Ferocity
I once had a coaching assignment: come up with 100 adjectives for myself. Even as a Word Nerd, this was a stretch for me. Someone suggested that I ask others – it’s only cheating if I feel that it’s cheating. Nope, not cheating. With my list somewhere in the 70s, a friend looked at me…
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How to Learn to Love Your Language: Insult with Style
*** DISCLAIMER: I am not advocating being nasty or hurting people’s feelings.Just being creative when you are and might. *** One of the best reasons to have an expansive vocabulary is so that you can insult people with style. Crassly insulting someone/thing in public is generally frowned upon. For example, “you’re f-ing ugly” is a…
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There is No “Out of the Box,” Why to Enjoy the Box You Think From
My initial inspiration for this blog was when a recovering engineer I know said that he “thinks out of the box” when setting up video shoots. My initial thought was, “No you don’t, you just think from a different box.” Ta Da! A blog topic is born! Shortly after that incident, I heard about a…
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Emphasis on the Wrong Syllable, English is Weird or am I Just Saying it Wrong?
Have you ever looked at a word, pronounced it in your head, and then not know what everyone else is talking about? You are probably suffering from Emphasis on the Wrong Syllable syndrome (pronounced Em-Fā-Siss on the Wrong Sa-Lab-El). My best personal example is Appomattox. I walked into US History class one day and that…
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Excite Your Senses: Take a Walk Through the Thesaurus
Scratching my head, trying to come up with a blog idea, I went to Evernote to check out some of my random blog ideas, and I came across a link to 204 Words to Describe Colours (the article is out of South Africa, they spell like the British). Then I hit the links for taste…
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Word Rant: Percent
Language evolves. Words change meaning – sometimes to the opposite of the original definition. I get this, sometimes I encourage it, sometimes I don’t. However, there are some incorrectly used words that evolution will never fix. Today’s rant is around the use of the word “percent.” Simply put, percent means “of 100.” It is another…
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Are They Stupid, or Just Ignorant?
Here’s a definition subtlety for you: What’s the difference between ignorance and stupidity? Here’s what Dictionary.com has to say: ignorant: lacking in knowledge or training; unlearned:an ignorant man. lacking knowledge or information as to a particular subject or fact:ignorant of quantum physics. uninformed; unaware. due to or showing lack of knowledge or training:an ignorant statement.…
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The “Should” of Expectations
Ages ago, I wrote about “should” and what I define as the right and wrong way to use that word. Recently, while speaking with one of my various coaches, I mentioned that something was expected. Her response was that an expectation is just as bad as a should. And I realized that it was time…
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What is Journalism?
As you may have heard, I’m writing a book. One of the writers that agreed to contribute said that his specialty was journalism – the problem is that he didn’t answer my questions with information I would think of as being from a journalist. So, I thought maybe I wasn’t defining the word properly. So,…
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Client v Customer: What are You, Who do You Want?
Many people would say that a client and a customer are the same thing. On the surface, those people are not totally wrong – in fact, the third definition of client on dictionary.com is “a customer.” But, the third definition is not the first, so while similar, the two are different. (There I go, splitting…