Posts tagged as:

WRITING

MEMORIAL: an object to reflect the memory of someone, such as a plaque or tombstone

February 26, 2013

Every day I go through an intersection at the corner of Smith Street and Oakland Street in Providence.  It is just an ordinary intersection joining two streets in the Smith Hill section of the city, just up the hill from the State House.  It is a mixed use neighborhood with multi-family homes, offices, and a [...]

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The Penultimate Posting: Tomorrow will be my 1,000th Blog Posting!

August 28, 2012

In October, 2009, I posted my first ever blog posting along with a promise that it would be the first posted every day.   Except for a couple of days when I was in the hospital and one when my technology failed, I’ve kept that promise and TOMORROW, AUGUST 29, 20112, WILL BE MY 1,000th POSTING [...]

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SPAM: no longer a canned mystery meat

August 13, 2012

“Thank you for the sensible critique. Me & my neighbor were just preparing to do a little research about this. We got a grab a book from our area library but I think I learned more clear from this post. I’m very glad to see such magnificent info being shared freely out there.” I get [...]

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GRASPING AT STRAWS: putting faith in potential rescues that can’t deliver

July 1, 2012

Figures of speech come easily to the speaker or the writer, but we seldom take the time to figure out what they meant originally.   A good example is today’s “word”, grasping at straws. The best answer I can find is that it refers to a person who is drowning who grabs for the straws or [...]

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SOUPÇON: [soop-SAWN]: a hint of something

June 1, 2012

I’m not really fond of garlic.   I know that living in Providence means that I’m now a target for some really serious body damage on a dark night.   This is the world’s capital for Italian food, featuring some of the best Italian restaurants in existence.   But, even though my life is now in danger, I [...]

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CLICHE (klee-SHAY): anything that has become trite or commonplace through overuse.

May 5, 2012

I watch enough baseball and basketball on television to be able to recognize a cliche when I hear it.  You can’t get through a couple of innings without beginning to suffer from listener nausea as the play-by-play broadcaster and his “color” sidekick exhaust their supply of  tired, used, and wrinkled phrases which were fun at [...]

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RIFE: abundant

May 2, 2012

If there is already a word like abundant to describe a more-than-adequate supply of objects, why would you then revert to the use of the word rife?   It’s an Old English word which means the same thing, but is used so obscurely that many people would not be aware of its meaning.   Yet it is [...]

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FARTHER/FURTHER: not exactly the same meaning

April 17, 2012

If you have been using farther and further interchangeably, don’t start beating yourself with a hose.   In general usage, you aren’t wrong. Garner tells us that “Both are comparative degrees of far, but they have undergone DIFFERENTIATION.  In the best usage, farther refers to physical distances, further to figurative distances.” * What that means is [...]

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METAFICTION: fiction which self-consciously reflects upon itself.*

March 6, 2012

The idea of writing a piece of fiction which is about writing a piece of fiction may sound confusing, but it’s actually not.  It’s like an artist painting a self-portrait.  The theme of the story is, in a sense, two-fold:  (1) telling the story of the lead character, an author; and (2) telling the story [...]

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OBTUSE: dull

November 14, 2011

A person can be obtuse. So can a topic, a program, a comment, even a movie.   It all depends upon how engaging they are.  And some people are just plain obtuse … boring … dull. It doesn’t take a lot to dis-engage someone.  A discussion may start out in a very interesting way, but soon [...]

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