Articles from 2006

When spell-check can't help you: The Scripps National Spelling Bee publishes a consolidated list of 23,413 unique words. Here are a few, ahem, vexing examples. Okay, spellers -- on your mark, get set, go:

Adapted from "Bird Words," contributed by subscriber Ruth Beasley. Ruth writes about birds on her website Learning the Birds. She can also be heard on High Plains Public Radio , her local NPR affiliate in Garden City, Kansas.

A large part of learning the birds is the attempt to gain fluency in a new language. Bird words, I call 'em. Memorable words like melanistic, pileated, accipiter, and axillar -- none my spell-checker recognizes. These fine words permeate the bird books, meticulously staking out descriptive territory.

Birders are people for whom subtle differences are carefully noted, and it's important to get the lingo right. Colors are precise, with shades of tawny, bay, cinnamon, ivory, chestnut, and buff. I'm still figuring out the difference between sooty and slatey, mottled and splotched.

Subscriber Bertha from England asks:

I enjoyed reading your article Writer's Craft in March, and will take great care when using the word "craft." I was actually surprised to learn that using it with regard to writing a position paper amounts to some abuse (or misuse! I have often stated that in my work!

On to what I really want to comment on: a recent word of the day "preen." I looked up synonyms and discovered one "primp" whose meaning appears to be similar if not the same as a word used in the US "pimp" as in "pimp my car." I first heard this expression while watching a television programme showing a group of mechanics who transform an old, beaten up, rusty car into a new wonderful and very attractive vehicles with all sorts of fittings in the interior. At the end when the owner of the vehicle sees how transformed it is they exclaim, "Thank you Mr. X for pimping my ride!" Now, I wonder, are the two words the same?