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: chthonic… When I read the novel Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff, I was puzzled to encounter a word that I not only didn’t know but that seemed absurdly impossible […]
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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: parvenu. I learned the word parvenu as a child. My father was extraordinarily pompous and used it to describe people he didn’t like: wealthy people with no class
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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: hypotaxis. I’ve watched the upcoming American election with more than my usual interest (I have an undergrad degree in political science), as a result of the bizarre performance
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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: pullulated. I may not know the precise meaning of a word but I seldom meet one I have never heard or seen before. Hence my surprise when I came
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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: mauzy… When I travel, I like to read a book set in the place I’m travelling to. My husband and I spent two weeks in Newfoundland this summer
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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: cruft… My word-of-the-week comes from my good friend Eve Johnson. She stumbled across it twice in one day. The word, cruft, was new to me as well. It means
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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: soubrette… Earlier this year I read the funny and interesting memoir Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life by Steve Martin. An actor, comedian, writer, producer and musician, Martin came to public
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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: gimlet-eyed. Listening to podcasts has become one of my new favourite pastimes. I never miss Freakonomics and I also make time for Fresh Air, The West Wing Weekly
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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: blowsily… I’ve always enjoyed the word blowsy and assumed it referred to a messy, gregarious woman with unkempt hair. But when I encountered it in the very fine novel The
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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: ferrule… After hearing a radio interview with author Jonathan Lee I decided his novel, High Dive, would interest me. The book is a fictionalized re-telling of the 1984 attempt