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: portmanteau… When I recently read the word portmanteau, I mistakenly thought of a porte cochère. The latter term refers to a covered entrance …
What’s a ‘portmanteau’? 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: auscultation… Many friends and colleagues had recommended the 2011 novel The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht to me but I never picked …
What does ‘auscultation’ 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: rime… I had never read anything written by the darkly comic Danish author Dorothe Nors. But when her 2017 novel Mirror, Shoulder, …
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: ruction… An unsparing novel that addresses and denunciates the sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Ireland, A History of Loneliness, by …
What’s a ‘ruction’? 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: ineludible… I often like first novels because, while sometimes flawed, they often display an edge or a nerve that’s sometimes missing from …
What does ‘ineludible’ 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: epiphanic… When I recently learned the meaning of the word epiphanic, I slapped myself over the head for not having figured it out …
What does ‘epiphanic’ 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: dovecote…. When I read the word dovecote in John LeCarré’s memoir Pigeon Tunnel, I had no idea how appropriate it was. Here …
What’s a ‘dovecote’? 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: coeval… When I read the novel The Incendiaries by R.O. Kwon, I enountered more than my usual number of new-to-me words. One …
What does ‘coeval’ 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: suborned… I’d heard the word a million or so times (probably in every episode of Law & Order I ever watched) but I …
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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: shambolic…. When I read the word shambolic in the a memoir by Steve Jobs’ daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, I knew immediately what she …
What does ‘shambolic’ mean? Read More »
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