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Winter is not only coming, it is well & truly here. If not in the Game of Thrones, at least in the northern hemisphere. For Monsoon, we did a piece on how weather is a great source of creative inspiration in literature. So, for this week’s Word Nerd, we will look at 6 idiomatic phrases […]

The human body fascinates all of us endlessly. It’s front and center – on magazine covers, in poetry and medical journals, in cultural debates and literary criticism, in rites and experiments. There are ways in which we talk about it, ways in which we should talk about it, and ways in which we never should. […]

I had never even changed school before. All my life I had studied at one place. So, it was difficult leaving DPS Ruby Park: friends, memories, even teachers and the school itself. It was not just about school though. I was leaving my city, where I had lived all my life; I was leaving my […]

“I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English.” Saki, The Chronicles of Clovis In an earlier Word Nerd, we’ve discussed how accents divide us even when we speak a common language. Today, we want to talk about how idioms and […]

Maybe you’ve been chided for being disheveled, but have you ever been complimented for being ‘shevelled’ or ‘hevelled’? And there must’ve been times when you were dismayed, but were you ever just ‘mayed’? Chances are, you’ve answered no to both questions. It’s because English, like life, is not made of binaries. Not every word has […]

In this Word Nerd, we are talking valedictions, which sounds fancy; cucumber-sandwiches-and-Earl-Grey-with-the-Queen-and-Archbishop-fancy. But it’s just Latin for farewell. As Robertson Davies once said, “When John Ryder, for instance, writes I utter valediction to the author of my being, he means simply that he said goodbye to his mother.” And farewells are as important in the […]

New words are constantly entering a language. Especially if that language is English (The Oxford English Dictionary adds approximately 1000 words each year). Words can be added by way of catastrophic wars, technological inventions, or simple and persistent mispronunciation. Quite often, the new words which are added are “authorisms” – which Paul Dickson defines as […]

Swearing is mostly impolite, sometimes necessary and rarely fun. But it is an indispensable part of human existence. Stubbed your toe against the chair at night? Got a ridiculously unreasonable colleague? Stuck in traffic while on the way to an exam? Favourite character dies in the cliffhanger? Letting your favourite rude words rip is a […]

If I were to ask you to say some made-up English words, what would be the first one you’d think of? The first that came to my mind was ‘Google’. But it’s more adapted than made-up. Google’s co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin took an existing word, googol, and changed the spelling. Today, when we […]

Hit the average litterateur with the word autumn, and instead of stars, John Keats’ lines will swim before his or her eyes. And certainly, autumn is a “season of mists”, of “mellow fruitfulness”, of the “maturing sun” and other warm and romantic fantasies. But it is also a season of cooler air, longer nights and […]