Wordbite: Searching With A Lost Word
I ran into someone I mistook for Lose wandering down the trail in the park the other day. “Where’s your mom?” I asked. His face flushed. “If I hear that one more time I’m going to scream. I’m Loose, not Lose!” he growled. “Oh, sorry!” I said hastily. I looked at him again, opened my mouth, then closed it and turned a spreading grin into a cough. “What’s the matter?” He was way too self-conscious. “Looking for...
Read MoreWordbite: It’s Always Lain Where You’d Laid It
Laid let me in when I paid him and his wife Lain a visit, grinning cheerfully. It was only after I blinked my pupils into focus in the dim foyer that I noticed he was holding a black leather glove. I was about to ask him about it when his wife Lain arrived, and together the past participle couple led me to… what used to be the living room. Books, gadgets, heels of bread, half-empty soda cans, mugs and coasters, cardigans, a ham radio, socks, CD cases, plastic...
Read MoreWordbite: A Cafe Chat About Etc. and Et Al.
“Do I look like anyone else you know?” I blinked and peered over the top of my paper at Et Cetera. He’d asked if anyone was sitting in the empty cafe seat across from me and I’d grunted, unwilling to be shaken entirely out of the comics. Now he was bending a straw in half, not looking at me. Knowing I’d heard his question clearly. I decided to bite. “Nope.” I made a show of ruffling papers as I turned to the home and garden section. When I bite,...
Read MoreWordbite: Counseling Who And Whom
I sighed as I looked through my peephole at the familiar couple, Who and Whom, one behind the other. I liked them, but it was never a good thing to see them together. I let them in with a perfunctory greeting as I took their coats and gloves, and offered them tea. They looked at me, then Who said, “We’re considering a divorce.” I almost dropped their gloves. “Excuse me?” “You heard him. People like him better–admit it!” Whom demanded. Her eyes...
Read MoreWordbite: The Truth About “Very”
No doubt about it, the usage of very is for either truly great writers or children. No others need apply. “My train was very fast.” “When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.” Both sentences are above reproach. For the rest of us, though, very is that word we furtively stomp on as if it were a roach we don’t want guests to notice. We wait till they move on, then slap a “stronger” word on top, and no one will ever know....
Read MoreWordbite: The Purpose of “That”
I recently brought a disconsolate-looking word in from wandering in the cold, flinching at every mention of its name. Over banana milkshakes, with a bit of whipped cream on its upper lip, the little four-letter fellow–that–told me it’s no longer certain whether to jump in or stay out of a sentence, or even about its real purpose in language anymore. “It depends, you know, on so many things. I watch closely these days, to see if the writer is an easygoing sort,...
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