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.
Word count: 251 words Reading time: About 1 minute If you increase your vocabulary you’ll not only help your reading, you’ll also make your writing more precise. Here is my word of the week, peripatetic. When I read the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs, the author reminded me that novelist Mona Simpson (pictured here) was […]
A dreamy and peripatetic life… Read More »
Word count: 207 words Reading time: Less than 1 minute Building your vocabulary is always a good idea. It benefits your reading and it also helps you be more specific and precise in your writing. Here is my word of the week, cupreous. I’m going through a Julian Barnes phase right now. I’d never read
Crying cupreous tears… Read More »
Word count: 230 words Reading time: Less than 1 minute Building your vocabulary is always a good idea. It benefits your reading and it also helps you be more specific and precise in your writing. Here is my word of the week. I learned a new word this week: spraints. If it’s new to you
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Word count: 265 words Reading time: About 1 minute Building your vocabulary is always a good idea. It benefits your reading and it also helps you be more specific and precise in your writing. Here is my word of the week, fecklessly. Even a book you don’t like very much can teach you something. A
What does fecklessly mean? Read More »
Word count: 261 words Reading time: About a minute If you increase your vocabulary you’ll not only help your reading, you’ll also make your writing more precise. Here is my word of the week, emended. I speak a tiny bit of French, badly, so I always admire people who are able to use more than
Word count: 237 words Reading time: about 1 minute Easter offers a four-day long weekend in Canada. That’s why, on Monday, my husband and I could be found taking a 90-minute walk along the beaches of Boundary Bay. This spectacular area, only a 30-minute drive from where we live, offers water, wide open spaces and
Word count: 223 words Reading time: less than a minute Not much of a fan of murder mysteries, I’ve never before read anything by the formidable P.D. James. Ah, but she’s a canny one. Determined to reach people like me, she has borrowed her most recent set and characters from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Death comes to Pemberley Read More »
Word count: 219 words Reading time: Less than 1 minute If you increase your vocabulary you’ll not only help your reading, you’ll also make your writing more precise. Here is my word of the week, perseverate. Do you ever come across a word that you’ve read many times before and suddenly realize you don’t know what it
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Word count: 158 words Reading time: about 30 seconds If you increase your vocabulary you’ll not only help your reading, you’ll also make your writing more precise. Here is my word of the week, melisma. My husband, girls and I just returned from a spring break holiday that my son chose not to attend. (He
What does melisma mean? Read More »
Word count: 145 words Reading time: half a minute If you increase your vocabulary you’ll not only help your reading, you’ll also make your writing more precise. Here is my word of the week, nacreous. I remember being disappointed by the novel Faith by Jennifer Haigh. Even though Haigh clearly knows how to work a
What does nacreous mean? Read More »
