Some proverbs and expressions become so popular that they end up being part and parcel of the language, adorning it and adding more flavor to conversations, sort of like flowers blossoming on a branching tree. For instance, a couple of years ago, I was at a restaurant with a friend of mine when an old …
English
Through the advent of technology, emails have replaced written letters and stressful face-to-face interactions. In correspondence, a sign-off message is an important politeness marker which serves as a closing cue to end an interaction. Interestingly, these all-too-common sign-off messages may imply a variety of tones and meaning to the audience. To shed light on these …
Making a choice between two closely-related words can be sometimes tricky, not to mention taxing. Although it feels quite uncanny to get confused about a language that we seem to know by heart, linguistic doubts are indeed natural. So, why don’t we take a closer look between “which” and “what” to find out the nuances …
Sometimes, we get caught up with deciding which expressions should be used in certain conversations. We could get nervous when talking with strangers which could lead to unintentional cringeworthy remarks called “faux pas.” In business-related discussions, things could get awry when we misconvey our thoughts, which is quite compromising. So now, let me lay down …
Stock phrases are often really interesting from a linguistic point of view. In some ways, you can think of them as tide pools. When the overall ocean of old language rolls away, we’re left with small places where old, uncommon words remain in usage despite being otherwise forgotten. You might be asking yourself, “What’s with …
Which is a better choice, “more so” or “moreso”? Is the latter variant incorrect? For some reason, humans break the “rules” to achieve some sense of language convenience. This has been the case with “moreso,” the non-standard variant of “more so” which is used to either intensify or recall ideas in sentences. Now, without much …
Even though the election results were announced mid-November of 2020, the effects of this momentous event are still reverberating at the time of this writing, mid-January 2021. It was only a few days ago when the rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, and there is currently talk of impeaching President Trump for a second time. With …
If you grew up in the 1980s, odds are you spent a healthy portion of your childhood watching the G.I. Joe cartoon on TV. If not, you were, at the very least, aware of the Hasbro G.I. Joe toys, trading cards, movies, video games, and even comic books. G.I. Joe was everywhere. Anyway, in an …
Some languages, like Welsh and French, have different feminine and masculine words for professions and other words describing people. English is inconsistent with this practice, sometimes making it difficult to tell what the right word is to use when referring to someone who does a specific profession or task. Sometimes, things are made even more …