The Perfect Essay
Draft is a series about the art and craft of writing. Looking back on too many years of education, I can identify one truly impossible teacher. She cared about me, and my intellectual life, even when I didn’t. Her expectations were high — impossibly so. She was an English teacher.
100 Mostly Small But Expressive Interjections
David Bier Thanks for this – what a fun post considering there’s no actual narrative in it! Cecily Some of these interjections are quite culturally and age specific, so if people need to be told what they mean, they should probably not be using them.For example, to many Brits, va-va-voom is not old-fashioned at all, but instead is firmly linked to the long-running ads that footballer Thierry Henry made for the Renault Clio. Himanshu Chanda Whoa ! What a biiiig list.
There's a Word for That: 25 Expressions You Should Have in Your Vocabulary
Recently I came across this amazing little Tumblr named ‘OtherWordly‘ – itself a play on words. It consists of a collection of strange and lovely words from different languages through different times. What I like most about this selection of consonants and vowels – little meaning-carrying packages of vibration – is that they all try to point to the unspeakable, the transient or the neglected.
How 'OK' took over the world
18 February 2011Last updated at 10:49 OK is everywhere, used every day It crops up in our speech dozens of times every day, although it apparently means little.
What phrases are included in Phrasefinder Database?
The database is made from phrases, sayings and idioms that are in common use in English. That includes anything that most people will have heard before and will recognise the meaning of. For instance: The many thousands of phrases that are used every day in colloquial speech, like 'the whole nine yards', 'go for it' and 'kiss and make up'.
The Coming of the Toads
Where did that egg come from? What egg? Why are you sitting on an egg? What egg? Cats are not supposed to sit on eggs. You see eggs?
100 Exquisite Adjectives
By Mark Nichol Adjectives — descriptive words that modify nouns — often come under fire for their cluttering quality, but often it’s quality, not quantity, that is the issue. Plenty of tired adjectives are available to spoil a good sentence, but when you find just the right word for the job, enrichment ensues. Practice precision when you select words. Here’s a list of adjectives:
Writer Creates “Color Thesaurus” To Help You Correctly Name Any Color Imaginable
Ingrid Sundberg, a writer and children’s book illustrator, created a very useful infographic chart for anyone struggling with color names. The writer says that she loves to collect words that can help give her stories variety and depth. Show Full Text
10 Latin Phrases You Pretend to Understand
Our 8th annual ‘10 Issue’ is on newsstands now. This week, we’ll be highlighting some of our favorite lists from past installments. The following article comes from the 4th annual edition. If it puts you in a subscribing mood, here are the details. (Or consider our subscription + mental_floss t-shirt deal for just a few dollars more.)
List of idioms in the English language
This is a list of notable idioms in the English language. An idiom is a common word or phrase with a culturally understood meaning that differs from what its composite words' denotations would suggest. For example, an English speaker would understand the phrase "kick the bucket" to mean "to die" – and also to actually kick a bucket. Furthermore, they would understand when each meaning is being used in context. An idiom is not to be confused with other figures of speech such as a metaphor, which invokes an image by use of implicit comparisons (e.g., "the man of steel" ); a simile, which invokes an image by use of explicit comparisons (e.g., "faster than a speeding bullet"); and hyperbole, which exaggerates an image beyond truthfulness (e.g., like "missed by a mile" ).
Dear Mr Gove: You are too unexpert to determine young people's reading
My daughter will be doing an exam in three years' time which will have your fingerprints all over it. This is bizarre. I used to think that when I went into the voting booth at a general election I was doing something general. I now know that in 2015, I will be taking part in a process that will decide something as detailed and specific as what book my daughter will have to read for her GCSE.
