Welcome to another newsletter from A Way with Words. We've got cheese! It was our second week in a row talking about the books of David Crystal. (He deserves it!) This time, we plunged into the rich pages of his book "As They Say in...
You seem to hear it on all the television hospital dramas: “stat!” A physician says she knows it means “immediately,” but she doesn’t know its origins. Quick! Is there a Latin expert in the house? This is part of a...
hot tubbing n.— «He might have preferred a new way of hearing expert testimony that Australian lawyers call hot tubbing. In that procedure, also called concurrent evidence, experts are still chosen by the parties, but they testify...
syngraphics n.— «Gene Hessler…, of Cincinnati, Ohio, is best known as a paper money expert. He coined “syngraphics” as the term for collecting paper money.» —“Hessler recipient of Zerbe award” Numismatic...
draftnik n.— «The 1970s saw the rise of a small but fervent wave of writers, known to many as draftniks.» —“No formula for becoming an NFL draft expert” by Childs Walker Baltimore Sun (Maryland) Apr. 22...
wisebot n.— «John Burgess, a retired US foreign service officer who blogs about Saudi Arabia, is a “wisebot”—defined as a Web-savvy expert on some subject who is both wise and smart.» —“Clicks and politics: the impact of...