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: 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: piebald. The Salley Vickers novel Miss Garnet’s Angel holds an honoured spot in my lifetime list of top 10 books. (My list, I must confess, changes regularly, but this book […]
What does piebald 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: gallimaufry. When I read the new Elizabeth Gilbert novel, The Signature of All Things, I was gobsmacked to see a word I couldn’t fathom: gallimaufry. Here is how she
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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: pellucid. There are certain words I like mainly because of the sound of them. Take, pellucid, for example. Isn’t that a beautiful word? I encountered it, recently, when I
What does pellucid 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: petrichor. Today I have a word that I did not discover through my reading, but, instead, learned from my son. The word is petrichor. Isn’t that mellifluous? This noun
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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: snaggletoothed. I read the novel A Christmas Hope (in April, no less!) purely because I saw it on the shelf of the library and I had long
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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: ineluctably. As a longtime fan of the book The War of Art, I was delighted to discover that author Steven Pressfield has a delightful and active blog. And
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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: bardo. I read the novel The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt while on holiday last month. All 771 pages of it. It wasn’t the kind of book I’d ever
I’ve been in a kind of bardo state 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: suppurate. When I worked in the daily newspaper business, I spent an occasional few hours in the photo studio. I was helping to edit a cookbook and
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Reading time: About 1.5 minutes 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: desultory. Whenever I read I like to record words that either tickle my fancy or that I don’t yet know on a first-name basis. (I use the notes
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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: turgid. I have a daughter with a genetic disorder. She’s done really well, but the nature of her condition (neuro-fibrom-atosis) means that something can go wildly wrong at
A twenty-four-hour state of turgid alarm Read More »
