Reading time: Less than one 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: saturnine… I chose to read John Lahr’s profile of the actress Viola Davis (pictured above) — in the Dec. 19 & 26/16 New Yorker — because I think she’s […]
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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: scabrous I finished the novel Hot Milk by Deborah Levy (pictured above) last week and can’t say I much liked it. Despite glowing reviews from the New York Times
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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: 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: 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: 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: porcine… I don’t know that I’ve ever used the word porcine, but when my colleague John Friesen emailed me about it, I knew what it meant. You can
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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: morganatic…. A Ukrainian-born Russian-registered cossack who became the lover of Russian Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, Count Alexei Grigorievich Razumovsky was also rumoured to be something I’d never heard of: a morganatic husband. I learned
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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: splenetic… When my reader, John Friesen, emailed me the word splenetic I had to confess I hadn’t encountered it before. He discovered it in the March 19/16 Washington
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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: exiguous… I didn’t enjoy the plot of the novel Saving Agnes by Rachel Cusk. But I found her writing remarkable. You can see some examples of her superb figurative language here.
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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: tenebrous… Loyal reader John Friesen likes to send me words he collects in his reading. The latest? Tenebrous. It comes from the book The Making of Home by
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