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Know how to use rain, rein and reign
It’s spring in South Africa and in the season’s first flush, we had a smattering of rain. That’s the stuff of celebration. What’s not to celebrate is the state of…
No-cry zones with sunions: How words are formed
You’ve heard of a no-fly zone. Now, there’s a no-cry zone. That’s when it comes to onions. Or rather sunions. English is not the only discipline to combine two elements…
An attack of destinesia
New word from a six year old: Palindromes and portmanteus: how words are formed
Almost every word in English has a definition and almost every word composition has a description for why it came to be called that. Until that is, the word that…
Zeitgeist: how words originate
Zeitgeist is a lovely word to get your teeth into, literally and figuratively. And both syllables require a firm grit. Derived from the German language, the word is surrounded by…
Have these men done their fartlek?
Fartlek, among the funniest words in the English language
Yesterday as I was cursing the spinning instructor for insisting I use muscles I didn’t know I had to save energy, I thought she had lost the plot. Saving energy…
Of acronyms and shortened words: abbreviations explained
This week a client asked me, “Is it okay to write CEO?” I was a bit taken aback because CEO is one of those ‘words’ that is better known by…
Take the log out of your eye and other idioms
I was recently at an Editing for Inclusivity workshop which aimed to address racial, gender and all other kinds of stereotyping that fills our communication to an embarrassing extent. This…
Top 10 gender / age appropriate words of 2017
Have you noticed how your language changes to fit trends that begin to invade your life? Twitterati is a word in use since the advent of Twitter, Google is a…
How calendar days differ from others
I have always wondered about the difference between a calendar day and just a regular day. The same applies to a calendar month. What I learnt is that a calendar…
Deliciously sedulous : increase your word power
I am catching up with the past, voraciously reading through the pages of William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice with a copyright date of 1979. A literary marvel, the author provides delightful…
