Good morning, word nerds! Thanks for joining me for another Word Nerd Wednesday.As I was reading this week, I was reminded of a phrase I haven’t heard in quite some time: a fine kettle of fish. It’s most often heard in this kind of context: “Well, this is a fine kettle of fish you’ve landed us in.”
Happy Wednesday, word nerds! If you read last week’s word nerd post, you’ll know we’ve shifted temporarily into spelling-nerd mode so we can discuss that well known spelling mnemonic “I before E except after C”—specifically, the suggestion that the rule is useless because there are 923 exceptions to it.
Greetings, word nerds! We’re going to become spelling nerds today, because the time has come to set the world straight! I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying “‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’.” It’s catchy, isn’t it? And it’s handy little mnemonic for words like receive, deceive, believe, and relieve.
What’s this? A Word Nerd Wednesday post? I know, I know. It’s been aaaages, but I’ve been so busy and it’s been a while since a word leaped out at me like vertiginous did this week. It was actually the sole bright…
Hello, word nerds! And if this is your first time visiting my new site (or even your first time visiting me!), welcome! I’m very excited about my new home on the web, and I hope you’ll join me by subscribing, particularly if you were subscribed to my old site. If you want to have a…
Welcome to the first Word Nerd Wednesday post for 2019! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. I was super excited to receive Jeff Kacirk’s Calendar of Forgotten English from my sister as a Christmas gift, so guess who’s going to have plenty of Word Nerd Wednesday fodder this year!
Welcome, word nerds! I have a quick one for you today that follows on from last week’s post on the word stereotype. As a brief recap for those who missed last week’s post (and are too lazy to click on the link 😉 ), we learned last week that stereotype was originally a printing term. Back in the days when movable type was used to create a form (a completed page ready for printing), printers began to use stereotypes as a way of making printing more efficient. Rather than using the form for printing, they created an impression of the form in papier-mâché, which was then used
Happy Wednesday, word nerds! This week’s Word Nerd post is inspired by last week’s Top Ten Tuesday post, in which I gave a list of people that book lovers everywhere should be thankful for. In the process of putting together that post, I came across the origin of the word stereotype, and it was so interesting that I thought I’d share it with you!