nibling, niephling, niefling, etc
In honor of my new niephling Avery: A few years back, Arthur E introduced me to the word "niephling," a gender-neutral word for nieces and nephews. Most useful when the...
Online Encore
Are y'all familiar with the game "Encore"? There's a boardgame version of it, but I first encountered it as a parlor game (not sure which version came first), in which...
Cherubim, Seraphim, and otherim
Something I've been seeing unusually often lately: use of "-im" words as singular. The "-im" suffix, in words derived from Hebrew, is generally a masculine plural, as far as I...
CXO
The abbreviation "CXO" or "CxO" refers to the set of executives whose titles start with "Chief" and end with "Officer"--CEO, CFO, CIO, etc. For details and a cite, see Word...
23rd hour
I've of course heard of things happening "at the 11th hour"--very late in a process. But apparently things can happen even later than that: Alicia Summers of El Mirage, Arizona[,...
Words easily confused #19
Time for another installment in my Words easily confused series. (For more recent installments, see the errors category of this blog.) As usual, an asterisk indicates an incorrect-usage example. I...
that of
In the past few days, I keep seeing people misuse the phrase "that of" in the same kind of way, apparently for emphasis. Like this: * My primary concern is...
Falling in line
A CNN article this morning, talking about Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, notes: "Kaine could help Obama fall in the Democrats' column for the first time in 44 years." Presumably...
plutonic
Cute typo in New York Times movie page: Two lifelong plutonic friends, strapped for cash and in debt, decide to make a porno. --from the page for Zack and Miri...
Shortening
Is there a name for the particular kind of term-shortening where a term or phrase is abbreviated to its first component, even if that's not the important/meaningful part? The most...