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Tag Archives: Dictionaries

When English Words Become Obsolete Posted by on Aug 25, 2021

An old friend used to say that social media was, “Just a lot of old twaddle.” From the context of his sentence, I knew that twaddle meant “useless gossip’. But it was years before I knew that twaddle was a real, though nearly obsolete, word. It still appears in some dictionaries, but you will almost…

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A Disagreeable Word Posted by on Jul 2, 2020

Some days you just can’t win. I stumbled upon a posting on social media the other day which had me wondering if there was any hope for the world. I stared at it in disbelief for several moments, then spent maybe 15 minutes in an effort to disprove what I had read. Sadly, it was…

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DARE to Learn American English Posted by on May 25, 2017

What if I told you that American English is so diversified that there are different words and phrases for the same thing not only from region-to-region, but even from neighborhood-to-neighborhood? Let me introduce you to one of the most remarkable dictionaries of the English Language. The Dictionary of American Regional English, or DARE, documents and…

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