In a continuing series of SAT study tips provided by Veritas Prep, BloombergBusiness advised students last month to "approach the SAT as if it were an athletic event." The recommended training regimen involves healthful eating, exercise, anxiety avoidance, and most importantly, consistent review.Continue reading...
An ado is a fuss, and adieu is French for farewell. They sound similar but aren't exactly twins. Ado sounds like "uh-doo" and adieu is like "a-dyoo," you know, in a cool French accent.Continue reading...
Use the word farther when you mean physical distance, like if you run farther than your friend. Use further for basically everything else. Further refers to abstractions like ideas or thoughts.Continue reading...
The public radio show "On the Media" notes that "in the age of Snowden and Manning, the term 'whistleblower' is increasingly present in our media. But where exactly did the word come from?" Brooke Gladstone talked to our executive editor Ben Zimmer for some historical background.Continue reading...
Short and spare, and following a two-and-a-half-hour oration that had brought listeners to tears, The Gettysburg Address received only polite applause when Abraham Lincoln delivered the speech. Of course, it has since come to be considered one of our country's defining statements of national values.Continue reading...
At a time when every civilized man carried a sonnet to his secret lover tucked into a back pocket, Shakespeare's sonnets out-swooned every other swoon-seeker's, and Sonnet 116 "Let me not to the marriage of true minds," has remained a favorite of lovers everywhere. For Valentine's Day, master some tricky words using our Sonnet 116 Vocabulary List.Continue reading...
The story of Steve Henderson — a software engineer bent on single-handedly fixing every use of the word comprise in Wikipedia entries where compose would be more appropriate — has captured the popular imagination. Yesterday, Southern California Public Radio invited our own Ben Zimmer to explain the difference and weigh in on the wisdom of Henderson's quest.Continue reading...