{"id":1721,"date":"2004-01-24T10:10:46","date_gmt":"2004-01-24T18:10:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2004\/01\/24\/1721.html"},"modified":"2004-01-24T10:10:46","modified_gmt":"2004-01-24T18:10:46","slug":"words-easily-misused-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2004\/01\/24\/words-easily-misused-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Words easily misused #11"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I've seen two different journalers use the term potboiler<\/a><\/span> correctly this morning, but I've also talked with a lot of people in the past who were confused as to what it meant. So, as a public service, I'll note that (as I understand it) the term derives from the notion of a book that an author writes solely to keep the pot boiling—that is, a book written for money (presumably as opposed to one written for artistic reasons). It is, as Nick M. notes, a somewhat derogatory term. The people I've talked with who've been confused about the meaning thought that it referred to a book that's so gripping that the reader doesn't notice the pot is boiling over on the stove; while it's certainly possible for a potboiler to have that effect, that's not really what the term is meant to imply.<\/p>\n

While I'm here, I'll mention another term that I don't think the speaker was using in its usual sense: the CEO of a certain software company, in a conference call describing quarterly financial results, recently referred to a newly hired executive as \"well-heeled.\" From context, I'm pretty sure that the CEO meant the exec was very experienced; I'm not sure whether it was just a speech mistake, or whether the CEO didn't realize that well-heeled<\/a><\/span> means \"rich.\"<\/p>\n

In other news, MW10 seems to have had a bit of a site redesign recently. Not sure yet whether I like it. Hey, what do y'all think of the sidebar on those definition pages? In particular, what do you think of the fact that the sub-pages under each sidebar heading are collapsed\/invisible until you click the heading? Would it be better to show a fully expanded sidebar showing all 24 (or so) sub-pages, so you could get anywhere on the site in one click? There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches; I can't decide which I like better.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve seen two different journalers use the term potboiler correctly this morning, but I’ve also talked with a lot of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-words-easily-confused"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}