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: 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 »
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: Gaeltacht…. An Irish writer of literary fiction, Colum McCann was born in Dublin but now lives and works in New York. I was …
What does ‘Gaeltacht’ 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: escutcheon…. I am reading the delightful novel A Gentleman in Moscow, a gift from a friend. Written by a man with the …
What’s an escutcheon? 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: galumphing…. I’ve known since I was a teenager that the verb to galumph meant to move in a clumsy or noisy manner. When …
What’s the origin of the word ‘galumphing’? 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: brume…. If you’d asked me to describe brume and I hadn’t seen the spelling, I’d have thought you were talking about the …
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: enfilade…. I know when I read a Julian Barnes novel that I’m going to have the bonus of several new words to …
What does ‘enfilade’ 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: abjure…. I’ve encountered the word abjure many times, and undoubtedly learned its meaning many times as well, but for some reason it’s …
What does ‘abjure’ mean? Read More »
