Vocabulary.com Blog
Articles about Language
We've been talking to Bryan A. Garner about the new edition of Garner's Modern American Usage. Garner's book is not simply a compendium of do's and don't's: he also offers thoughtful essays advising writers on a wide variety of topics related to usage and style. Here we present Garner's essay on "Plain Language," a useful tonic to muddled and belabored prose.
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Bryan A. Garner wears many hats: he is a lawyer, a prolific lecturer, and an equally prolific author. Since 1995, he has been editor-in-chief of Black's Law Dictionary. He is also the author of Garner's Modern American Usage, a widely respected guide to contemporary usage that has just been published in its third edition. In this, the first of our two-part interview with Garner, we learn what it means to be an "informed prescriptivist," and why you should be wary of anyone who uses prior to instead of before.
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Recently, at the vibrant dog community in Chicago's Lincoln Park, a two-pound, three-month-old malti-poo puppy was engaged in a rigorous, Pepe le Pew-like program of incessantly humping every dog in his path. Well, not every dog. He did stick to pooches that were somewhat in his "league," such as my own 12-pound rat terrier, who thankfully didn't bite the preposterous puppy's head off for taking such liberties.
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Blog Excerpts
Age of the Aughts
"Double zeroes"? "Goose eggs"? "Diddly-squats"? Visual Thesaurus contributor Mark Peters considers the tricky question of what we should call the current decade in his latest column for Good Magazine.
The Language Lounge removed to the Netherlands for a short break last month, with the specific mission of observing several of the various putative Dutch contributions to English on their native soil: Dutch courage, Dutch uncles, Dutch ovens, Dutch auctions, Dutch doors, Dutch hoes, and Dutch treats, to name a few.
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Earlier this week we spoke to Stephen Dodson, co-author of Uglier than a Monkey's Armpit, a compendium of curses and insults from around the world. By way of introduction to this lively and engaging book, here is a (lightly expurgated!) letter to readers from Stephen, musing on the boundless creativity of the "gems of abuse" he has collected.
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Want to insult someone in Japanese? Try misokakku ('scum of soya paste'). In Polish, try motyla noga ('butterfly's leg'), and in Turkish, muhallebi çocuğu ('child of pudding'). These and hundreds of other colorful put-downs from around the world can be found in the delightful new book, Uglier Than a Monkey's Armpit by Stephen Dodson and Dr. Robert Vanderplank. We spoke about the book with Dodson, known to many language lovers by his nom de blog, Languagehat.
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