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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: swards. I read William Trevor’s 1994 novel Felicia’s Journey in a mad panic last November. I was desperate to hit my goal of 52 books before the end of the […]

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: prodome. In early November, I was in a panic. I resolve to read 52 books every year — and, in fact, I resolve more than that, because I

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: kerplooie. I enjoy watching movies but I’ve never approached them with the same enthusiasm I have for reading books. That may change, now that I’ve read, Afterglow: A Last Conversation

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: fandangle… Occasionally, in my search for a word-of-the-week, I look not for unusual words, whose definitions lie just outside my grasp. Instead, I search for showy terms. Interesting

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: excrescence. I haven’t seen the movie Frank. But I can tell you it’s a comedy about a young man who joins a band of pop musicians led by a guy named

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: meniscus…. I am obsessed with food memoirs. So obsessed that I’m writing one myself. And part of my research is reading even more of these books. I’m

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 (well, really, it’s a phrase): screaming meemies. I adore reduplications and I use them whenever I can. What are they? They occur whenever  the root or stem or a

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: quisling. I’m a trailing edge baby-boomer, born in the late 1950s. My parents, both Canadians, were deeply marked by the Second World War. My father was enlisted in the Air Force

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: ambuscader. One of my readers, Richard Holden, has published a collection of short stories in a genre he calls “Elderlit.” I hadn’t before heard the term so he

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: cagoule. I seldom encounter words that offer me terra incognita. But a word in the very fine novel, Landing Gear, by Kate Pullinger, took me into just such a