"handy-dandy" Do we sometimes say, "Wait a sec, while I get my handy-dandy Swiss Army knife" just because we like the echoic sound or was it an adaptation by extension of the child's game called "handy-dandy"? Or is it because we are doubling up and saying "handy k...

Nah, just the Ernest Hemingway school of writing.

Oh, that and being in a hurry...

That was very cute!

English is tough.
Some things just are.
Learn them.
Accept them.
Live them.

I don't know much about haiku, but if it is not already the right meter, you could probably do a tweak here and there and have one.

Oh no...I write this, supposedly in response to bnjtokyo { It did not dawn on me to think "way" back to gangsters...although I was familiar with James Cagney (e.g. "You dirty rat; you ....".) } ...What in the heck am I talking about? This does not even fit any of the responses th...

Thanks! Wow, I was waaaaaaaaaaaay off on this one.....I was thinking more along the lines of the Black Death (Bubonic Plague)....finally, I realized that at the time that was happening, they did not know WHAT was causing it...perhaps an "ether", etc. It did not dawn on me to think "wa...

Why do we exclaim "Rats!" when something goes awry! I was talking via IM with my friend in St. Petersburg (Russia), mainly in Russian, but something I was doing was not working and I suddenly "said", "Rats!". She responds, "Rats????????" (it is LITERALLY "...

???metonymy??? Oh, rats, I don't know!!! These are terms that are reasonable to create. I was looking for a term that illustrates the *fallacious nature* of defining an entire category by a an instance of that category when the instance does not embody the full meaning of the category. Analogous to ...

The use of a part to define a whole is synecdoche but I I'm not sure that DSteve is looking for that word. Converting a proper noun to a common noun, such as Kleenex to kleenex (if that has finally occurred) or Aspirin (Bayer trademark originally) to aspirin is called commonization . The original n...

Can you tell me a word that describes this situation. I think there is a word for it but I am not sure. Or perhaps this is one instance of something that would be characterized by such a word. I just cannot think of it, or maybe I never knew of it in the first place Let us say we have a definition t...

I hope that someone can give you the answer. I so often find that I know what the correct usage is, without a clue as to why. Other languages are so much more systematic in their grammer. So true.... Well, in particular, it is embarrassing to explain English phonetics, which, unless one is steeped ...

A Russian pen pal wrote to me, stating in the course of the narrative: "I have much fun learning....". I was trying to explain in Russian why, in this particular context, we say "I have a lot of fun learning" or "I have quite a bit of fun learning", but "I have muc...

"gloss".....I am only posing the word as a topic for Dr. Goodwood to discuss in a "Word of the Day", since this is the "Suggestion" section. I probably won't track additions to this thread, so I won't comment further, but if you wish, have at it. I am referring to the m...

One thing I came up with is that cadigan appears to be itself. The only definition I found is that it is a word for thingamabob, which makes it a tautology, no? A word can't be its own definition, can it? I did NOT know that about so-called "cadigan", and as such, I would agree with you. ...

It seems to me that kadigan/cadigan is a recently coined technical term in English. I personally have never encountered it before, and the term are not defined in any of the major dictionaries (Webster's et al.). The internet suggests it was coined in the 1960's and used to denote a sematic categor...

I don't know if this website is helpful, but they say they a have a word for you: Website: http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/2490462 Word and examples: * In Russian, fillers are called "слова-паразиты" (vermin words); the most common are "Э-э" (eh), "это" (this), &...