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: scion…. If you’d asked me if I understood the meaning of the term scion, I would have said yes. But I would never have been able to […]
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: hawser… As a longtime fan of the English writer Julian Barnes, I gave a little squeal of joy when my husband picked up a 1989 book of
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: epiphenomena…. When a word is similar to a better known cousin, sometimes it’s harder rather than easier to discern the meaning of the lesser known term. Such
What does the word ‘epiphenomena’ 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: apogee…. I’ve seen the word apogee dozens of times in my reading. I knew, vaguely, that it meant the height or high spot of something. But I
What does ‘apogee’ 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: mesallinace…. Craig Brown’s book, Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret, is enormous fun, even for people who aren’t fans of the royals. A kind of a meditation on the
What’s a ‘mesalliance’? 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: uxorious…. When I encountered the word uxorious in Patricia Hampl’s very fine non-fiction book The Art of the Wasted Day, I had no idea what it meant.
What does ‘uxorious’ mean? Read More »
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: hajj…. Some writers are clearly well educated and deeply literate and when I picked up Patricia Hampl’s book The Art of the Wasted Day, I knew immediately
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: teasel… I keep a Word document containing all the new and interesting words I encounter in my daily reading. When I collected the word teasel from Maggie
What is a ‘teasel’? 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: caesura…. When I saw the word caesura, I knew it meant a gap or a pause and I assumed the term to be musical. But I wasn’t
What’s a ‘caesura’? 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: halitotic…. When I read the word halitotic in a recent New York Times Book Review piece, I was pretty sure I knew what it meant. Here is
What does ‘halitotic’ mean? Read More »
