Believe it or not, groak is a verb that means “to stare at another’s food in hopes that he or she will offer you some, in the manner of dogs and certain people we know.” But you won’t find groak in standard dictionaries. The human passion and power to name everything is nowhere better […]
DEAR RICHARD: On the local news, Carlo Cicchetto and Barbara-Lee Edwards both called the Padres hitting grand slams in four consecutive games “a historic feat”. On the CBS national news, Norah O’Donnell called last year’s fires and storms “an historic” series of events. It’s a for a hard h and an for silent h, […]
DEAR RICHARD LEDERER: When and why did our language develop the habit of appending so many verbs with the word up? Here’s my little-more-than a partial list: Act, amp, bang, beat, blow, board, bottle, break, bring, brush, buck, buckle, build, burn, call, clam, clean, clog, close, cloud, clutter, come, conjure, cooped, crack, crank, creep, […]
DEAR RICHARD: Congratulations on your wonderful “Tense Time with Verbs” poem and its eminently well-deserved display at the Planet Word Museum. I’m glad visitors to the museum will get to enjoy it. The verb tenses in your poem make me reflect that the English language is just impenetrable for anyone not born to it! […]
Actress Jamie Lee Curtis recently turned to Twitter to express her outrage that Merriam-Webster dictionaries now include the word irregardless. “In case you thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse, Merriam-Webster just officially recognized irregardless as a word,” the actress tweeted, and her grammar fanatic fans howled: “I don’t want to live on this planet […]
In the second half of the 19th century, America was flooded with new immigrants, “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” These fresh arrivals, especially the millions fleeing the Irish potato famine, helped popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. A hundred years ago, in 1920, Anoka, Minnesota, celebrated the first city-wide Halloween with a costumed […]
DEAR RICHARD: I am old, a few months from 90. So I have time to wander and ponder things., both significant and silly. Recently a rule of spelling popped up in what’s left of my mind, namely “I before e, except after c.” Well, what about either and neither, which can be pronounced eyether […]
DEAR RICHARD: Perhaps you can find a place in your column for this anonymous poetic definition of a pun. -Rick Miles, Sorrento Valley Two disparate strings of thought, Tied together with an acoustic knot. Thanks for your clever couplet, Rick. Here’s my favorite verse definition of a pun, also penned by the prolific Irish […]
DEAR RICHARD: In the U-T Sports section, I noticed that one of the articles was headlined “Magic Talks About Kobe’s Affect on L.A., Beyond, On Eve of Memorial.” Based on what I learned in grammar school, affect is a verb, while effect is a noun, if the word is referring to “a consequence” of […]
A month ago, I invited you, my punderful readers, to submit your best original preys on words. Within hours, a punami of more than 50 original puns poured in, and by the deadline for submission, I swam in a torrent of more than 200. From start to finish, every day was Punday. Such a response […]