There is a voguish new use of “adjacent” as a post positive adjective meaning “similar” or “not quite” or “imitative.” The usage is often a mix of the ironic and the descriptive as in this example I made up: “Though professing to be deeply athletic, she did nothing more strenuous than exercise-adjac...

VELLEITY, PIETY AND THE LAST PAGAN In the early fourth century CE, Emperor Constantine established Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire. Several decades later, Emperor Julian, during his brief reign (361-363 CE), tried to reverse the Christianization of the Empire and reestablish the pag...

Wiktionary gives the verb sublime as a synonym of sublimate. What crazy twists one word can take. “Sublime” = “sublimate”? Well, it’s a matter of context. I attended an all-boys Catholic high school. Item #1 on the agenda of the priests who ran the place was sublimation. Everywhere, not just the in...

The redundancy of “beforehand” is a curiosity, but it is not unique. We also say “right hand” and “left hand,” as in “ Make a right hand turn immediately after the bridge.” That usage is almost always oral, though I do know of a sign at the exit of a local parking garage that states “No left hand tu...

Jeremiad is a wonderful word: its sound, meaning, history and sense of outré all combing to pull it toward the top of GoodWords. In my own (highly idiosyncratic) lexicological taxonomy, I group “jeremiad” right next to “philippic.” But “jeremiad” is named for the speaker of the original jeremiads, w...

I have always associated “hear, hear” with outcries of assent in the British parliament. According to grammarly.com, it’s “hear, hear” not “here, here.” According to that same post on grammarly.com, MPs are still offered snuff when they enter the chamber. Ah, the Brits can be so twee. “Hear, hear” m...

In light of recent revelations about the Supreme Court, I am surprised “punctilious” and its odd noun “punctilio” have not appeared in media discussions of late. First year law students are taught that judges must avoid even the appearance of impropriety in order to preserve the integrity of the jud...

David, your mother’s cynicism about the food served at the sermon on the mount is matched by the Monty Python writers’ wicked version of that event in the movie “The Life of Brian.” The folks at the edge of the crowd can barely hear Jesus. Everyone is hungry. Imagine the actors using thick cockney a...

Fair warning: This is a long post about the use and abuse of vocabulary, and you may prefer to resume doom-scrolling on Facebook. The Agora lets us explore the power and dynamics of vocabulary. Unusual words are special cases. Sometimes those words are mere bijoux—delightful, interesting, historical...

Lyrics posted on line — especially of popular songs — often contain errors or variations. Sometimes the performer has altered the words to suit their taste or interpretation, other times the poster (often a just a fan writing what they think they heard) just got it wrong. If you look for the lyrics ...

As noted by Dr GoodWord, this word is distinct from the less common word “recreation,” sometimes spelled as”re-creation” for clarity. Perhaps the most familiar usage of “re-creation” is in the Christian hymn “Morning Has Broken.” Cat Stevens recorded a lovely version of this hymn, which became a pop...

Cryptocurrency is an excellent new portmanteau. It embodies all four meanings of “cryptic”: crypt-like, concealed, coded, and—given its disastrous applications and abuses—hopefully short-lived.

I once saw an ‘edited-for-television’ opus. This guy receives some life-shattering news . . . “Gosh darn it!” When the movie “ Saturday Night Fever” was released, it was an immense box office success. Several months later, the distributor decided to re-release it, but edited to get a lower rating o...

“All the Knowledge in the World” is a new book by Simon Garfield describing the history and demise of the encyclopedia. In a review of the book by Joseph Epstein, the reviewer writes that Garfield “ has produced a lively threnody to the encyclopedic impulse … . A lively threnody may seem an oxymoron...

References to the holodomor were suppressed during the Soviet era in order to quell the anti-Russian sentiments that were deeply felt by generations of Ukrainians. After the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine slipped the Russian leash. (I lived in Kyiv in 1993). There was an explosion of makeshift mem...