noun

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: penumbra. By the time I hit grade 11, I’d mostly opted out of maths and sciences and, instead, focused on literature and social studies. Still, I knew what 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: boffin.  I lost interest in most popular music around 1979 when I graduated from university. I didn’t lose interest in all music, mind you. But as I aged,

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: paresis. I almost tried to write today’s post in rhyming couplets. This is because my word of the week comes from the marvellous rhyming novel Love, Dishonour, Marry,

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: helter-skelter… I’ve known the meaning of the adverb and adjective helter-skelter for at least 45 years. It means something done in a haphazard manner or with undue haste or confusion.

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: palaver. I had never heard of the bestselling novel The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared until I saw my 20-year-old daughter wandering around the house with

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: karoshi. Before I met my husband, 27 years ago, I was a self-diagnosed workaholic. My husband’s relaxed, easy-going manner helped me lighten up a lot, even though I continue to work

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: ekphrasis. When I saw the noun ekphrasis, I had no idea what it meant. But by the sound of it, I knew it was Greek. I encountered it in a

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: odalisque. A story in the January 2014 Vanity Fair magazine, headlined “Frieze until numbness sets in,” and written by A.A. Gill, focused on the Fall 2013 London Art Fair.

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

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