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: Gaeltacht…. An Irish writer of literary fiction, Colum McCann was born in Dublin but now lives and works in New York. I was deeply impressed by his 2009 […]
What does ‘Gaeltacht’ 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: escutcheon…. I am reading the delightful novel A Gentleman in Moscow, a gift from a friend. Written by a man with the improbable name Amor Towles (a
What’s an escutcheon? 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: galumphing…. I’ve known since I was a teenager that the verb to galumph meant to move in a clumsy or noisy manner. When I was 13, my parents
What’s the origin of the word ‘galumphing’? 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: brume…. If you’d asked me to describe brume and I hadn’t seen the spelling, I’d have thought you were talking about the herbaceous plant in the Fabaceae family. Common
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: enfilade…. I know when I read a Julian Barnes novel that I’m going to have the bonus of several new words to learn. This was the case
What does ‘enfilade’ 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: abjure…. I’ve encountered the word abjure many times, and undoubtedly learned its meaning many times as well, but for some reason it’s never managed to lodge itself
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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 term: Belisha beacon… When I read a juicy novel, I particularly enjoy the way it sends me scurring to the dictionary or the internet. The Julian Barnes book
What’s a ‘Belisha beacon’? 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: sehnsucht… I was being lazy when I read the novel The Italian Party by Christina Lynch. It was an easy, unchallenging book described by The New York Times Book Review
What is ‘sehnsucht’? 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: epicanthic… Even though there is a doctor in my family, my understanding of medical terminology is weak. (I was always a word nerd, never a science geek.)
What does ‘epicanthic’ 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: androgynous… I think just about everyone knows the term, androgynous means, “partly male and partly female in appearance; of indeterminate sex.” The photo atop this post shows a
What’s the origin of the word ‘androgynous’? Read More »
