Grammarist

Coup de grace

Grammarist — Wed, 16 May 2012 03:30:11 +0000

In English, a coup de grace is a strong finishing stroke or a decisive way of ending something. The loan phrase from French is used in all sorts of contexts. For instance, it’s often used in reference to competitive sports to describe a move or a score that effectively ends the match, and it’s often [...]

Veracity/veraciousness vs. voracity/voraciousness

Grammarist — Wed, 16 May 2012 02:28:12 +0000

Veracity means truthfulness or honesty. Its corresponding adjective is veracious, which is synonymous with true or truthful. Voracity is the noun corresponding to the adjective voracious, which means (1) eager to consume a great amount of food, or (2) marked by an insatiable appetite. Veracity is far more common than the rare voracity, so the [...]

Woolen vs. woollen

Grammarist — Fri, 11 May 2012 06:13:49 +0000

For the adjective meaning made of wool, woolen is the preferred spelling in American English, though woollen appears about a tenth of the time. In varities of English from outside North America, woollen prevails by a large margin. Both spellings appear about equally often in Canadian news publications that publish online. Woollen is by far [...]

A priori

Grammarist — Fri, 11 May 2012 05:14:38 +0000

A priori is Latin for what is before. In English, we use it to describe ideas, arguments, and assumptions that are based on conjecture, prejudice, or abstract reasoning rather than real-world experience. For example, if you say tomorrow is going to be a boring day, this is an a priori statement because you have no [...]

Buses vs. busses

Grammarist — Tue, 08 May 2012 04:49:44 +0000

In 21st-century English, buses is the preferred plural of the noun bus. Busses appears occasionally, and dictionaries list it as a secondary spelling, but it’s been out of favor for over a century. This is true in all main varieties of English. After bus emerged in the 19th century as an abbreviation of omnibus, buses [...]

Whinge

Grammarist — Tue, 08 May 2012 03:21:22 +0000

To whinge is to complain, especially in a fretful and persistent way. The word is roughly synonymous with whine, grouse, and gripe, and it often connotes annoyance with the complaining person or a sense that the complaining is unreasonable. The word is almost nonexistent in American and Canadian English. While we find hundreds of instances [...]

Wack vs. whack

Grammarist — Mon, 07 May 2012 01:22:06 +0000

The word meaning very bad or of dubious quality is wack, with no h. Your spell check might disapprove of wack, but the word has been in English a quarter of a century, and it has another sense—an eccentric or crazy person—that is even older, so spell check is wrong. Given the older definition of [...]

Plainclothes

Grammarist — Sun, 06 May 2012 19:51:57 +0000

Plainclothes is an adjective used to describe a police officer who wears civilian clothes to avoid being identified as law enforcement. Using a participial adjective—plainclothesed or plainclothed—might seem to make logical sense, but plainclothes has functioned adjectivally for at least a century and is not questioned by anyone conversant with law-enforcement lingo. It’s closely related to [...]

Figurehead

Grammarist — Thu, 03 May 2012 16:40:50 +0000

A figurehead is a person with nominal leadership of an organization or government but no actual authority. For example, many modern monarchs are figureheads because their roles are merely ceremonial and most of their power was long ago ceded to democratic government. Figurehead is often misused to mean leader, head, or prominent figure without implying [...]

Canceled vs. cancelled

Grammarist — Thu, 03 May 2012 04:57:48 +0000

In American English, the verb cancel is inflected canceled and canceling—with one l. In varieties of English from outside the U.S., including Canadian, British, and Australian English, cancelled and cancelling are the preferred spellings. The distinction does not extend to cancellation, which everywhere is spelled with two l’s. Related Traveled vs. travelled As the Ngram [...]