“What could a body do?” That use of the word body was the norm for my grandmother, an Appalachian person born in 1876. In current (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
My new Web site
The X factor…. Malcolm or Latin?
02/18/2020 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsSo easy to ridicule liberals …. or Liberals. They are now taking to saying “Latinx” instead of Latin, Latino, or Latina. Seems silly, right? Just (Continue Reading)
Great example of British misunderstanding of “gotten”
01/29/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentHere is a writer education in English (I don’t think it is her native language but her writing indicates native-like command) who does something I (Continue Reading)
The transmogrification of a word
01/11/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentI started to title this bugaloo but thought better of it. I even deliberately misspelled it here. The Bugaloo was a dance originating in the (Continue Reading)
he up and left or he up and left?
12/22/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe other day, Clapper, the former CIA chief, said, “He upped and did something.” In my speech it would be, “He up and did …..” (Continue Reading)
Music to my Yiddishe ears
12/15/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy sister-in-law has a granddaughter about 4 who told her that her friends Caleb and Sarah do not celebrate Christmas, they celebrate Harmonica.
Delicate meaning of a word
12/03/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentHere is a brief discussion on the Urdu list re a particular word: “”””Yes, exactly. Agree with Anjum Altaf Sahab here. The current use of (Continue Reading)
What did you call me?
10/27/2019 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsTry to think of a word, a label, an epithet, that can be applied to White people with anything like the force the N word (Continue Reading)
An elusive word
10/24/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentWhile writing, I wanted to use a word that would be the action of someone intimidated, even frightened, made anxious by something. The word that (Continue Reading)
Nexus
09/14/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentDefinition of nexus (from on-line Merriam-Webster) 1 : CONNECTION, LINK the nexus between teachers and students also : a causal link the nexus between poverty (Continue Reading)
Urban = Black
08/03/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentAgain I heard a speaker use the term “urban” as a synonym for Black in the ethnic sense. Earlier, the mayor of Memphis had responded (Continue Reading)
mishegoss alert
06/24/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentUsually Yiddishisms don’t find their way into this blog since only the German element of the language is known to me at all (except ‘balabusta’). (Continue Reading)
Metaphorical tropes
06/07/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentI think I have the terms right. Listening to Admiral Stavridis on Morning Joe I noted his extensive use of these. I always thought expressions (Continue Reading)
Word of the day
02/16/2019 Pat Barrett Add CommentThe word is “raise” used intransitively. As I was fantasizing about having quad 60 machine guns mounted under the hood of my car to deploy (Continue Reading)
town and gown
02/10/2019 Pat Barrett 1 CommentFor some reason I wanted to know in French the expression “town and gown,” maybe because I’m reading a book in French discussing the university (Continue Reading)
Family only words
12/03/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn my family as a kid we used the word breakfast food for cereal even when we ate it at night before bed (a custom (Continue Reading)
cc and stenopad
11/24/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn our own time we see the way words or parts of words (and in this one case an abbreviation) survive when the original meaning (Continue Reading)
Skitter
11/14/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentDefine skitter without demonstrating it, i.e. using just words. Great word, chiseling precisely a type of movement. Think of a spider skittering across the floor. (Continue Reading)
Snarky
11/03/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentThis word, so new to me, goes back to 1906 and has an earlier history as meaning ‘annoy’. Its use has sky-rocketed recently with a (Continue Reading)
Watching the mountain being born
04/30/2018 Pat Barrett Add CommentLong time, no WOD. Here’s making up for it: Everyone remembers the amazing growth of a mountain right out of the earth as we watched. (Continue Reading)
Swoll
09/11/2017 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn school, I noticed a lot of the kids were using an old past participle, “swoll”, to describe what we called buff, i.e. a bit (Continue Reading)
wonky and random
12/21/2016 Pat Barrett Add CommentWonky is a new word for me and random is not, but the meaning of both have changed. Wonky means someone obsessed with the minutiae (Continue Reading)
How cliches wear down expressiveness and why we use them
09/14/2016 Pat Barrett Add CommentLiterally how many times have we heard someone say “literally” when they mean no such thing? I heard Trump say something the other day like that (Continue Reading)