Some of our most alluring, astonishing and astounding words begin with the last letter of our alphabet: Zarf. Few people know that the holder for a paper cone coffee cup is called a zarf. Here are my favorite thingamabobs that have names you probably never knew existed: • aglet. the little plastic tip of a […]
Happy New Year. It’s nice to have You Near. To celebrate a brand new year, here are 35 brief definitions of words that have the sound noo or n(y)oo in them. Sometimes the word will contain the actual letters new, as in newspaper. In other instances, the word will have a different spelling, as in […]
Dear Mr. Lederer: I am an old nut (nearly 80!) about limericks. You probably remember this one: I went to the Duchess for tea. It was just as I feared it would be. Her rumblings abdominal Were simply phenomenal, And everyone thought it was me. Having had a grandmother who was a very strict grammarian, […]
Tomorrow millions will begin watching the finals of the 2015 World Series of Poker. As luck would have it, you’re reading a column brought to you by the most successful breeder of world-class poker professionals in history. My son, Howard “The Professor” Lederer, and daughter, Annie Duke, have won $11.5 million in poker championships. I’m […]
When you speak and write, there is no law that says you have to use big words. Short words are as good as long ones, and short, old words — like sun and grass and home — are best of all. A lot of small words, more than you might think, can meet your needs […]
Three weeks ago, California-connected American Pharoah outraced the field and the spellchecker to become the first horse in 37 years to capture the Triple Crown. His epic feats of legerdemain have inspired me to maintain my equine-imity by exploring how horses figure prominently in the figures of speech that canter – neigh, gallop! – through […]
He was, according to his biographer James Boswell, a huge man. When he was barely out of infancy, he contracted scrofula, a disease that severely impaired his eyesight and left his face horribly disfigured. He attended Oxford University but, because of family finances, did not take a degree. For a while he operated a private […]
A hundred and seventy-five years ago Sunday, the most useful expression of universal communication ever devised first appeared in print. That word is OK, and it is recognizable and pronounceable in almost every language on earth. The explanations for the origin of OK have been as imaginative as they have been various. But the […]
The United Press International Stylebook cautions, “A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. As a writer, you are expected to know the difference.” Quite apparently, readers of this column want to know the differences between closely related words. Dear Mr. Lederer: I’ve seen both “in regards to…” and “in […]
Next week, Chanukah will fall on Thanksgiving, an exceedingly rare occurrence. I suspect that this year many families will enjoy their turkey stuffed with potato latkes and maybe even gefilte fish with a side of cranberry sauce. Should the Jewish holiday be written and sounded and spelled as Hanukkah, the most popular version, or […]