A few stolen minutes out of your day to talk words and communication, because our daily lives are surrounded by the evolution and influence of words. Forget the grammar police. There is so much more to this conversation.
You can want for nothing or be found wanting; you can endure on your quest to understand the English language, as I might be wont to do, or just throw up your hands, as might be your wont. No matter the case, won’t you join me in this discussion of “want” vs. “wont” so we can finally all get this one right?
Here’s what you need to know:
A few stolen minutes out of your day to talk words and communication, because our daily lives are surrounded by the evolution and influence of words. Forget the grammar police. There is so much more to this conversation.
If something is foreboding, there’s something a bit ominous about it. Maybe that foreboding place is also forbidden. Maybe it’s verboten. That word raises the stakes a bit, doesn’t it? Do you know the difference?
First things first, yes, these are all English words, though if you want to argue “verboten” is German, you would also be correct. Like “angst” and “doppelganger,” “verboten” is a borrowed word; however, it has been in English dictionaries for over one hundred years. The English language is indeed full of borrowed words normalized over time. That’s one way it’s troublesome fascinating, right?
But back to today’s discussion…
I don’t know about you, but I’m trying to think positive thoughts these days, positive thoughts like peace, unity, health, and the pursuit of happiness. And today, all this leads me to a very important question:
Well, it depends on who you ask.
What the world needs now is love, sweet love. Yes, it does seem to be the thing that there’s just too little of, especially these days. Thank you for the reminder, Jackie DeShannon hit of 1965.
We don’t need to all hold hands and sing around a campfire, but a bit more comradery and/or camaraderie would be a good thing these days. Step one of this mission: figure out how to spell this word!
Hint: if you’re simply sounding it out, unfortunately, you’ll likely be wrong.
A few stolen minutes out of your day to talk words and communication, because our daily lives are surrounded by the evolution and influence of words. Forget the grammar police. There is so much more to this conversation.
One can have cookies in their cache, or if they are a celebrity chef, maybe their cookies have cachet. But what does this all mean? Let’s dive in. (Hint: they are not pronounced the same way.)
While “cache” and “cachet” are two unique words, they do come from the same French root. They are hardly alone in this etymological phenomenon. There are many word pairs that share the same root, some of which are obvious when you think about it, like “flour” and “flower,” which both come from the French fleur; some of which are surprising, like “ticket” and “etiquette,” which both come from the same French origin as well.
Sometimes, one word feels like another, just spoken with an accent. Add a Southern drawl to “desperate” and it sounds like “disparate,” right? But that doesn’t help our situation much—and hey, I’m from the American South, so it’s not a knock on Southerners, y’all.
Here’s what you need to know when spellcheck simply refuses to help you:
A few stolen minutes out of your day to talk words and communication, because our daily lives are surrounded by the evolution and influence of words. Forget the grammar police. There is so much more to this conversation.
