Word Smarts

  How many of the lessons you learned in English class do you remember? Many people who grow up speaking English learn to do so “by ear” — picking up speech patterns and flow naturally. As such, native English speakers bend the rules of grammar every day. Although these rules are taught in classrooms and enforced by style guides, everyday English speaker often follow a different set of standards, with a focus on clarity, emphasis, and natural flow. While some may label these modifications as “mistakes,” they actually serve a purpose in casual conversation, making them valuable for non-native English speakers to learn and understand. Using Dangling Modifiers Dangling modifiers  are created when the subject being described is not explicitly stated in the sentence. Although this is technically a grammatical error, native English speakers use dangling modifiers all the time. For example, consider this sentence: “While eating dinner, the phone rang.” Obviously, the phone was not ea...

  When you have sauce all over your fingers and a belly full of ribs, the last thing on your mind is probably the minutiae of the English language. But once you’ve had ample time to digest the food, you might find yourself wondering whether it’s spelled “barbecue” or “barbeque.” In some cases, a single letter can make a huge difference — take “champ” vs. “chump,” for instance. But when it comes to good old-fashioned BBQ, many people use the spellings interchangeably, though most dictionaries and style guides argue one is  technically  more correct. (The AP style guide specifically says not to use “BBQ” or “barbeque,” and Merriam-Webster lists “barbeque” as an alternative spelling for the noun, but it provides a “less common” label.) However you spell it, the word is derived from American Spanish — specifically the term  barbacoa , which is “the wood framework for supporting cooked or dried meat.” English speakers began using the word as a verb around 1689, referring ...

  The word “portmanteau” was created long ago for a large travel trunk capable of opening into two equal parts. It wasn’t until 1871 that the term was repurposed by Lewis Carroll, author of  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  Carroll’s version of a portmanteau was  “a word that blends together the sounds and meanings of two other words” — which is the primary usage today. If you’ve ever asked someone to brunch or checked into a motel, you’ve used one of these mashups. Here are a few of the most common portmanteaus that English speakers use regularly. Brunch This portmanteau combines the words “breakfast” and “lunch” in a delectable combination that denotes the meal that occurs in late morning or early afternoon — usually on weekends, sometimes including alcohol. Brunch menus tend to include both traditional breakfast and lunch fare, as the culinary lines are a bit more blurred than at other meals.  The earliest use of “brunch” dates to the late 19th century. An ...

  Latin  was originally spoken 3,000 years ago by small groups of people living along the lower Tiber River in present-day Italy. During the height of the Roman Empire, the language exploded across the European continent and the western Mediterranean coastal regions of Africa. Today, Latin has a reputation of being a “dead language,” but that descriptor isn’t entirely accurate. It provides the building blocks for all of the Romance languages, and many words and expressions in contemporary English are borrowed straight from Latin. Take the informal motto of the United States:  E Pluribus Unum  is Latin for “oOut of many, one.” Here’s a list of common expressions, words, and mottos for major institutions that owe their origin to this so-called dead language. Veni, Vidi, Vici This quote, meaning “ I came, I saw, I conquered ,” is famously attributed to  Julius Caesar , sent in a message to the Roman Senate to describe his victory against King Pharnaces II of Pontus...

  Much like “peanut butter and jelly” or “do’s and don’ts,” some English words are forever intertwined. These paired phrases are called “binomial expressions” — they consist of two terms, often joined by “and” or “or,” and the order of the terms is almost always fixed. Think of “black and white,” “more or less,” or “safe and sound.” Those classic binomial expressions use familiar words, but the phrase “kit and caboodle” —  meaning  “a number of things considered as a unit” — spotlights a word that is almost exclusively used as a part of this expression.   Let’s talk about each individual component. According to  Merriam-Webster , “ kit ” has a wide array of meanings, all of which largely refer to a collection or set of individual components (e.g., tools, parts). “ Caboodle ” has a very similar definition, meaning “all the things of a group.” Essentially, the terms are synonyms and now exist as two similar parts of one common phrase. Gary Martin of the blog ...

  Physical comedy will always get a laugh, but some of the funniest jokes involve clever wordplay or layers upon layers of storytelling. And then there are other occasions where all it takes is one silly-sounding word to make someone chortle. Some humorous English terms sound hilarious on their own without any additional context, though everyone has a different opinion when it comes to which one is funniest. Here’s a look at some rib-tickling contenders, according to experts in both language and comedy. Booty In a 2017  study , researchers assigned subjective “humor ratings” to 4,997 English words in an effort to determine the funniest terms. More than 800 participants were polled, with the results showing a clear winner: “booty.” The word can refer to a pirate’s plunder or a person’s butt, but in either case, “booty” received a humor rating of 4.32/5. That beat out other strong contenders including “tit,” “booby,” and “nitwit.” That same study  provided some interesting ...

  Before we talk about the word “schwa,” and what this symbol does, let’s just acknowledge how fun it is to say over and over. Schhhwaaaa … schhhwaaaaa … OK, that’s enough of that. “Schwa” is the name for the upside-down “e” symbol (ǝ) often seen in the dictionary in the pronunciation guide as part of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). It’s derived from the Hebrew word  shva  — a vowel that serves a similar purpose and appears in writing as two vertical dots beneath a letter. When it comes to pronunciation, the “ǝ” designates an unstressed syllable pronounced more like “uh.” What makes a schwa special is that it often shows up even when there doesn’t appear to be a letter. Take “rhythm,” for example — while there’s no vowel seen between “th” and “m,” the IPA pronunciation shows “ əm” as the second syllable. The word is pronounced “RIH-thuhm” with the schwa symbol giving an unstressed vowel “uh” sound in the second syllable.  In addition to Hebrew and English,...

  Ask any Midwesterner and they’ll give you a list of activities that are quintessential to living in the middle of the United States: playing cornhole, eating casserole, and taking 30 minutes to say goodbye at a social gathering, just to name a few. Another requisite is the use of terms such as “pop” and “Naptown” that may sound strange to folks from other places. Natives of the Midwest have an endearing lingo all their own, and we’re here today to shed some light on this unique vernacular. You’ll be saying “Ope!” and making puppy chow in no time. Ope! Pronounced like “hope” with the “h” dropped, this is the Midwestern flavor of “whoops” or “my bad.” The origins of this interjection are unclear, but it comes in handy when you’ve bumped into someone, dropped your keys, or made a wrong turn. Essentially, “ope” is the way Midwesterners apologize to anyone for anything. Hotdish Hailing from the Minnesota-Dakotas-Wisconsin corridor, “hotdish” is usually considered a synonym for a casse...

  Some words have definitions that perfectly align with how they look or sound. For example, “hullabaloo” flawlessly evokes the idea of a commotion, and “snicker” undoubtedly calls to mind a stifled, scornful laugh. However, other words don’t match up to their meanings, because of either a misleading spelling or pronunciation. Learn why “pulchritudinous” is actually quite flattering, how “puce” isn’t a sickly green, and a few other words that don’t seem to match up to their definitions. Pulchritudinous Adjective: Beautiful. Describing someone or something as “pulchritudinous” is a compliment. The word might conjure up images of similar-sounding negative words like “putrid” (“of or characteristic of rotting matter”) or “turpitude” (“depravity; wickedness”), but “pulchritudinous” is far from those words. It was  derived  from the Latin word for “beauty,”  pulchritudo , and it was first recorded in  American English  in 1877, meaning “beautiful, fine, or grace...