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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: escutcheon…. I am reading the delightful novel A Gentleman in Moscow, a gift from a friend. Written by a man with 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: 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

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

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

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

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: aesthetic… I’m exceedingly grateful that none of my three children ever took up smoking. My father smoked, obsessively, for more than 60

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: sycophant… My word-of-the-week column doesn’t just address new and unusual words. It also focuses on ones that many of us know and

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: gouache… My late mother, Ethel, was an artist. Her medium was pastel chalks so I never heard her mention the word gouache

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: chifferobe… I read a number of positive reviews of the novel An American Marriage by Tayari Jones before it scampered to fame

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: scuttlebutt… I’ve used the word scuttlebutt on many occasions — it means rumour or gossip, as in “what’s the scuttlebutt? And I’ve