Because it’s the horses’ birthday today, I’ve used that to inspire this month’s pair of commonly confused words. Most people don’t confuse bridle (the piece of tack, or gear, that goes on a horse’s head and includes a bit – the metal mouthpiece – and the reins) with bridal (the adjective form of bride, meaning
I know: since I’ve tipped the trifecta for the last three years (go back and read the posts!), you want to know what I’m tipping this year. All I can say is that this is the hardest Cup in years, mainly because it is a very ordinary field (reminds a lot of the fields of
Zeugma, as well as being a useful Scrabble® word, is simply the name used when one word serves two different purposes in the one sentence. Usually, one of the senses is literal and the other metaphorical. For example: The room and her mood grew dark. The mountains and my spirits were high. In these
Hyphens and compound adjectives We know that we use adjectives to describe nouns, pronouns and other adjectives. But when we have a long string of adjectives before a noun, it is possible that some of them describe another adjective, rather than the noun at the end of the string. Consider these two sentences: The blacksmith
Yes: 31,800,000 people can be wrong From go to whoa is an old expression. Whoa is a word that is used by people who work with horses, where it is used to tell a horse to stop. Strangely, the word had two pronunciations: woo (rhymes with boo) and woe (rhymes with toe). Horses seem to
Adjectives have an interesting feature: we can compare many of them, and then use these comparisons to compare nouns. Trinidad and Tobago had a fast team in the men’s relay. The USA had a faster team. Jamaica, with Usain Bolt, had the fastest team of all. The different forms of the adjective fast (faster, fastest)
J.R.R. Tolkien, the professor of languages more famous for being the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of Rings, was fascinated by the idea of dragons from an early age. When he was about seven he began to compose his own story about a dragon. ‘I remember almost nothing about it except a philological
Adjectives have a simple use: they describe nouns, and also pronouns and other adjectives. A simple definition is that adjectives are ‘describing words’. If we think of nouns as containers of meaning, adjectives help to give extra definition to our meaning. We can talk about a container, for example, or a yellow container or a
Hoard and horde: two words with similar but distinct and different meanings. Hoard is the word used more frequently, particularly since COVID-19 swept over the world, which is possibly why it is sometimes used instead of horde. Hoard has traditionally meant a collection of valuable goods, usually gold, particularly coins, and jewellery. A hoard thus
Medal and meddle The difference between medal and meddle is straightforward: a medal is a small, wearable ornament, usually a metal disk, that usually either commemorates an event or has been awarded in recognition of some achievement. We see returned service personnel or their descendants wear their medals as they march on Anzac Day or