With Labor Day coming up, I’ve decided to share with you my checkered workplace history: My first job was working in an orange juice factory, but I got couldn’t concentrate on the same old boring rind, so I got canned. Then I became a lumberjack, but I just couldn’t hack it, so they gave me […]
Goodness gracious and good grief ! Leapin’ lizards and jumpin’ Jehosephat! I am an alliteration addict, a slave to the super-sized seductions of sequential syllables starting with the same sound. To tell the truth, the fickle finger of fate has made me the most alliterate fellow you’ll ever meet. So let’s rock and roll and […]
As part of my monthly series honoring the centennial of our world-famous San Diego Zoo, here’s a chance to test your knowledge of our fellow creatures that run and crawl and creep and gallop and swim and fly and hop around our planet. The Canary Islands in the Atlantic got their name from what creature? […]
This is the time of year when teachers send parents evaluations of their children’s academic and social progress. Here are some school reports about famous literary characters in their early years: • The Hulk has been a star heavyweight on the school wrestling team, but his classmates tease him for his tattered clothing and green […]
In last week’s column I commemorated the death of William Shakespeare 400 years ago, on April 23, 1616. The cause of the Bard’s exiting the earthly stage remains a mystery, but an entry in the diary of John Ward, the vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Stratford, where Shakespeare is buried, may offer a clue. […]
Little information about William Shakespeare’s personal life is available, but from municipal records we can deduce that he was born in the English village of Stratford-upon-Avon, in the county of Warwickshire, on April 23, 1564, and that after retiring to his hometown around 1611, he died there on April 23, 1616, at exactly 52 years […]
Politicians have been riddled by riddles: What’s a politician? A man who will double-cross that bridge when he comes to it. How can you tell when a politician is lying? His lips are moving. What do politicians and diapers have in common? They both need frequent changing— and for the same reason. What’s the difference […]
I’m button-burstingly proud to announce that this installment of “Lederer on Language” is my 200th for the Union-Tribune. This is a good time, then, to consider the verbal abundance of our English language. The other day I went to the bookstore to buy a dictionary. The clerk showed me a really cheap one. I couldn’t […]
The average American is bombarded daily with more than 1,600 commercial messages and by more than 50 million by the time he or she reaches 60 years of age. Many of these messages mislead by their use of weasel words, an expression that was born around 1900 and popularized by Theodore Roosevelt a century ago, […]
I am a proud resident of Scripps Ranch, and one of the men’s clubs in our community is named The Old Pros. The problem is that, more often than not, on T-shirts and other print media, the name of the club appears as “Old Pro’s.” Well, why not? For many, if there’s an s at […]