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English Superlatives Posted by Gary Locke on Jan 3, 2019
Pictured: The Grand Canyon. But, really, it’s the grandest canyon, don’t you think? In English, if you want to describe something, you use an adjective. There essentially are three types of adjectives – simple, comparative, and superlative. The most basic examples would be big, bigger, biggest. I ate a big sandwich, my sister ate a…
Top English Blog Posts of 2018 Posted by Gary Locke on Dec 27, 2018
We have arrived at the end of another year. It is traditional to look back and reflect on what was on our minds over the preceding 12 months and to see which blogs got your attention. After all, we write these pieces for you, to help you understand our language and the culture in which…
An Appalachian Christmas Posted by Gary Locke on Dec 20, 2018
One of the most distinctive and interesting cultural regions of the United States is Appalachia. It stretches southwest from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to the Smoky Mountains which border Tennessee and North Carolina. This snow-capped, evergreen-filled area is the living embodiment of an American Christmas card. Because Appalachia is overwhelmingly Christian in its…
Baby, It’s Cold Outside Posted by Gary Locke on Dec 13, 2018
Who knew that a Christmas song nearly 75 years old could be controversial? And yet, in this era of political correctness, when what we say and how we say it is more carefully scrutinized than ever, we have had a minor uproar in the US over a song our grandparents loved. The song is “Baby…
Should English Idioms be Modernized? Posted by Gary Locke on Dec 6, 2018
PETA, the animal rights organization, has proposed that we should reimagine some common English phrases to be more respectful of other species. They argue that phrases such as “I killed two birds with one stone” are as cruel as any hate speech. Similarly, a British researcher believes that, eventually, meat-based metaphors and sayings will be…
When English Offers Choices Posted by Gary Locke on Nov 29, 2018
This past week I witnessed a customer at a store point to something and say, “I’ll have two of those.” Before placing the items in a bag and finalizing the sale, the clerk said, “These ones?” That response by the clerk was a redundancy, the use of an extra word which wasn’t needed. Because the…
The English Word of the Year, 2018 Posted by Gary Locke on Nov 21, 2018
The editors of The Oxford Dictionaries, published by the Oxford University Press, have selected toxic as the 2018 English word of the year. It is a brilliant, if somewhat controversial, selection. In a year of intense divisiveness in the English-speaking world, it is easy to see why this word, and its association with all that…