SMALL LATIN, LESS GREEK… BUT CHURCHILL HAD A POINT TOO
Hi ENGLISH PLAYWRIGHT Ben Jonson wrote that his late colleague William Shakespeare had “smalle Latine, and lesse Greeke.” Well, come to think of it, me too. I was never encouraged … Continue reading
WELCOMING NEW (AND OLD) WORDS TO THE OED
I MUST confess that our family Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 1971, is appearing smaller and smaller each month. The OED’s official website has cited “New Words in … Continue reading
WHAT’S THAT IN OLD ENGLISH? PART 2
YESTERDAY IN “What’s That in Old English Part 1,” we concluded with edhwierfe!, the Old English verb “to return” in its imperative singular case. Given that you have returned, today … Continue reading
WHAT’S THAT IN OLD ENGLISH? PART 1
HERE ARE some tidbits about Old English, OE, for short, gleaned from a recent exhibition at the British Museum, a BBC article reviewing this exhibition, and my usual Internet sleuthing. … Continue reading
STYLISH WRITING PART 2
YESTERDAY IN PART 1, several sources were cited as references here at SimanaitisSays: Merriam-Webster, Karen Elizabeth Gordon’s The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the … Continue reading
STYLISH WRITING PART 1
THERE’S NO SHORTAGE of authorities on writing style, some of them even worth emulating. Readers of SimanaitisSays may already sense my trust in two sources, Merriam-Webster and The Compact Edition … Continue reading
DASH IT ALL!
THERE’S A MULTIPLICITY of punctuation marks that look quite similar: -, –, —, and ―. These are, respectively, the hyphen, the en dash, the em dash, and the horizontal bar. … Continue reading
SEVERAL MATHEMATICAL ETYMOLOGIES
WORDS IN MATHEMATICS have precise meanings. No surprise, this. And sometimes their etymologies have good tales to tell. Let’s look at “theorem,” and two of its related terms, “corollary” and … Continue reading
ETYMOLOGY: SCOUNDREL
TO QUOTE Trumpery of January 14, 2019, the president said that FBI personnel were “known scoundrels.” Were I a second-grader, I might respond, “It takes one to know one.” Given … Continue reading
ON PARTICLES
MRS. GRIMBLY, REST her teacher’s soul, would be disappointed that I’d forgot the meaning of an English language “particle.” Maybe I earn some redemption by recently learning about particles in … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 