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: wilco…. I was texting a good friend recently and after a brief exchange, received the following message from him: wilco. I immediately knew what he …
What does ‘wilco’ mean? Read More »
Reading time: About 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: stygian…. I didn’t used to read murder mysteries or thrillers but recently, thanks to the fine writing of Tana French, I’ve come to …
What does the word ‘stygian’ mean? Read More »
Reading time: About one 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: educe… I like being able to figure out the meaning of words from context. This challenge presented itself to me most recently when …
‘Educe’ — what does the word 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: trygghet… When I encounter a word I don’t recognize, I sometimes feel a sense of inadequacy. As a professional writer and editor, …
What does the word ‘trygghet’ mean? Read More »
Reading time: About 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: roshambo… A charming novel by Sameer Pandya — a creative writing and Asian American literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara — …
What does ‘roshambo’ 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: synecdoche… When I read Rumaan Alam’s latest novel Leave the World Behind, the word synecdoche, rang a dim bell in my mind, although …
What does synecdoche mean? Read More »
Reading time: About 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: susurrus. I love onomatopoeia which occurs when words phonetically imitate, resemble or suggest the source of the sound that they describe. Some of these words are related to water: splash, …
What does the word ‘susurrus’ mean? Read More »
Reading time: About 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: enterotomes… When I encounter what appears to be a highly technical word — like enterotomes — my eyes tend to glaze over a …
What are ‘enterotomes’? Read More »
Reading time: About 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: reliquary… The remarkable writer Meredith Hall became a published author relatively late in life. I haven’t yet read her memoir (about having become …
What’s a ‘reliquary’? Read More »
Reading time: Not quite a 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: slaked…. I have always associated the word slake or slaked with thirst. But when I recently encountered it in a recent and …
What does the word ‘slaked’ mean? Read More »
