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: bawn When I read the book The Innocents by Newfoundland writer Michael Crummey, I sometimes felt as though I was reading a …
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: bloviate… The term bloviate has long been one of my favourite words. I smiled when I spotted it in the interesting and …
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 words: rames and asperous…. Canadian novelist Michael Crummey writes with a colourful vocabulary. I think this is a result of his Newfoundland heritage, …
Reading time: Just over 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: skerry…. An award-winning poet and storyteller, Michael Crummey was born in Buchans, a mining town in the interior of Newfoundland. He writes …
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: loden…. I’m pretty good at guessing the meaning of words, probably as a result of my year of Latin in high school …
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: loge…. When I read the very amusing book The White Angel by John MacLachlan Gray, I encountered a word that was new …
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: barouche landau…. When I read the book Outline by Rachel Cusk, I encountered a term that was new to me: barouche landau. …
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: halitotic…. When I read the word halitotic in a recent New York Times Book Review piece, I was pretty sure I knew …
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: caesura…. When I saw the word caesura, I knew it meant a gap or a pause and I assumed the term to …
Reading time: Less than 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: fubsy…. I was reading the Delia Owens’ novel Where the Crawdads Sing when the word fubsy jumped off the page and gave …
