Idioms mean what idioms mean. I get that. So at this point, “pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps” means to improve one’s situation or succeed through one’s own efforts, without outside help. But the fact that pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps is, in...
“Did you just use Reynolds Wrap as a generic?” my friend asked with surprise. Like many American English speakers, I call facial tissues Kleenex, cotton swabs Q-tips, photocopying Xeroxing, adhesive tape Scotch tape, adhesive...
It seemed so obvious to me that “a couple of questions” referred to two questions that I never stopped to question it. In fact, I would even correct myself on this point of usage. If, for example, I typed in an email “I have a couple of questions,” then went on to...
The title might suggest that I am following up on Ben Yagoda’s informative post on the expression done and done, but instead I am revisiting one of my mother’s grammar bugbears. When my sisters and I were kids, at the end of dinner, we at least...
Some pronunciation shifts are squarely on my radar. For example, I feel like I am hearing more and more people pronounce the noun program with a schwa in the second syllable. For me, the second syllable sounds like “gram”; for these other speakers,...
I was reminded the other day of two things about prescriptive usage rules: (a) the power that comes with feeling like you know rules of usage that other people don’t (or have forgotten); and (b) the sometimes fine line between a usage rule that promotes standard usage...
This past weekend I was preparing for a talk I’ll be giving next month in Washington, D.C. At some moment I decided to check the description of the seminar online to make sure that I would be talking about what I said I would be talking about several months ago. (I...
When my 9-year old nephew asked his parents what a kerfuffle was, they said, “It’s like a brouhaha.” My nephew followed up, “What’s a brouhaha?” And his parents, in a move no lexicographer would endorse, responded, “It’s a kerfuffle.” Had my nephew looked...
In last Sunday’s “Social Q’s” column in The New York Times, Jennifer from Waccabuc, N.Y., described a man correcting her son for not saying “you’re welcome” after the man had thanked him for holding a door. Her question: Is it rude not to say...
