Tag Archives: American English

Word Nerd: 4 Words inspired by comic book characters

30 Dec

via GIPHY English is a busy language. Every year, English dictionaries can add up to 1000+ words. The words can come from memes, movies and comics! The coinages of comics have a mass appeal and often slip into canon. So, here’s a list of four words that the comics gave us. 1. Milquetoast The word […]

Word Nerd: How to avoid sexism in your writing

24 Mar

Have you ever been addressed as a man if you’re a woman or vice versa? And this was not because of your voice or appearance but simply because the other person could not be bothered to research or just felt free to assume? On the other hand, have you ever made the same mistake? Image […]

Word Nerd: 5 English words that owe their cool factor to hip-hop

16 Mar

By Anandamayee Singh In 2018, rapper Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer Prize for his album DAMN. At 31, Lamar became the first hip-hop artist to win a Pulitzer in a category normally overrun by classical composers. His win came fifty years after the explosion of hip-hop in the streets of Bronx, making it, more than […]

Word Nerd: 5 words banished from the Queen’s English in 2018

8 Jan

Every year since 1976, the Lake Superior State University publishes an annual List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use, and General Uselessness. Although the first list was inspired by the pet peeves of LSSU’s late public relations W.T. Rabe and his friends, the list is now culled from thousands of international […]

Word Nerd: An English-speaker’s guide to funny Americanisms

25 Sep

By now, many Americanisms have crept into English around the world, thanks to pop culture and Microsoft Word. Perhaps you say ‘restroom’ for ‘toilet’. Or you may be one of those people who say ‘from left field’ even though they’ve never played baseball. And you probably know that a ‘cheeseburger’ is a mere shadow of […]

Word Nerd: 5 types of people with a big, black cloud over their head

22 May

Mondays – that manmade scourge – are the favorite day of no sane person. People who love Mondays usually fall somewhere between ‘annoyingly enthusiastic’ and ‘mentally disturbed’. The only reasonable response to Mondays is an ill-tempered grunt. So, without further ado, here are a few ways to describe most people on Mondays (unfortunately, some people […]

Word Nerd: 9 Whacky and Wonderful Words to Describe People

15 May

You know when to call someone a tattletale or a copycat. You also know when to brand someone a turncoat or a nerd, a babbler or a blueblood. But these are basics. In today’s Word Nerd, we bring you 9 words which are great for describing people in ways you never thought of before. Enjoy. […]

5 Funny Poets You Need to Read

22 Mar

Poetry, for most of us, is like an embarrassing aunt. The one we want to avoid at social gatherings, the one we nod at absently when she grabs us and talks nineteen to the dozen, the one we are reluctant to be seen with in public, for fear that she will bore or embarrass the […]

Word Nerd: 8 words for boring nonsense that just won’t stop

20 Mar

Every party has a crashing bore who will corner you and launch into a labyrinthine story. Every seminar has that one gasbag in the audience who will share a personal opinion disguised as a never-ending question. Every family gathering has that dreaded relative with a chronic case of verbal diarrhea. Verbosity is a common hazard, […]

Word Nerd: What You See is Not What You Say

13 Mar

Is English a phonetic language? Yes. No. Maybe. If it was as phonetic a language as Hindi or Spanish, we would speak it just as we spell it. Instead, we have the silent k’s (knowledge, knight, kneel) and g’s (gnash, gnostic, gnome), the moody oe sound (shoes, does, goes), and the troublesome th (Thames, Thomas, […]