In today’s schools, mean girls might dismiss a classmate who wears Ugg boots, drinks sugary lattes, and listens to Top 40 radio as basic. This adjective for a slightly vapid, mainstream trend-follower first showed up in hip-hop lyrics around...
Writers and where they do their best creative work. A new book on Geoffrey Chaucer describes the dark, cramped, smelly room where he wrote his early work. Which raises the question: What kind of space do you need to produce your best writing...
It’s another newsletter from “A Way with Words.” Woot! In last weekend’s episode: Is it wrong to type two spaces after a period? We arm-wrestle over that, and talk about the odd language in “True Grit.” Also...
steeplejacking n.— «Let me now explain “steeplejacking.” This is what happens when mainstream denominational churches lose their congregational members to a nearby evangelical church. In very simple terms this is where members are...
desert cooler n.— Note: Wikipedia has a decent entry for this type of air conditioner. Collins is the only mainstream dictionary publisher to include the term, but does so with an outdated definition: “a cooling device in which air is...
mascara n.— «The A5 coupe, on which this convertible is based, was a breakout car for Audi in 2008, not only for its lovely proportions but also because it was the first mainstream Audi to feature the now-signature LED headlight...