6 Nick Claussen blog posts are equal to 24 regular posts!
What’s better than an ordinary compound word?
Well, I can easily think of hundreds of items, but for this column the answer is compound words that are made up of three words.
Heretofore you may not have thought much about these words, nevertheless I will explain my love for them inasmuch as possible so that whosoever reads this will also love these words forevermore.
Some days I say to myself, I hope that someday I will never see anyone use any one of these compound words or phrases incorrectly anymore.
At the very least, I hope that I don’t see these mistakes any more than I already do. Continue reading “Everyday words and phrases are mistaken every day”
I often come across words I would like to use in conversation, but don’t because I’m not sure how to pronounce them.
If I say them correctly, I will sound smart, but I mispronounce them I will surely sound vacuous or fatuous. Continue reading “Top 5 Words I Would Use In Conversation If I Knew How To Pronounce Them”
Are you ever unsure if you should insure, ensure or assure?
This happens to me often, which causes me great displeasure. In order to bring closure to the issue, though, I am offering a few simple rules: Continue reading “Insure and ensure ensure displeasure”
While not helping any of the children with their homework this week, I realized that I was pretty lost on most of the words in their vocabulary list.
And while I was definitely not helping them, I looked up several of the definitions and found that many of them seemed to fit with a familiar story. So, in order to help improve my vocabulary and hopefully get an A on some English homework, I present to you this classic Christmas story filled with the words in bold from two recent high school vocabulary lists.
Continue reading “A cursory Christmas tale of a reviled parsimonious old man who recanted”
Thanksgiving 2016 comes at a time when many people are worried about the future and are feeling despair due to the recent events this fall.
But enough about the Cleveland Browns fans.
Meanwhile, the rest the country seems to be either horrified or thrilled with the recent election. But while we have a lot of different opinions and plenty of strife, it’s actually a great time to have Thanksgiving.
We all have plenty to be thankful for, and here are a few items I am thankful for about Thanksgiving.
Continue reading “A few thoughts on Thanksgiving, Franksgiving, parades and cranwords”
Today, I literally heard people say the word “like” too often and in response I figuratively yelled, “Stop it” because I disliked it so much.
Like is magical word that can be a preposition, conjunction, noun, adjective or adverb. It is not, however, just a fill in word to be thrown in anywhere in a sentence for no apparent reason.
Continue reading “It’s fine to like like, but not it’s not like literally fine”
If you have a coat, you most likely wear it some days, forget it in the car on others and leave it at home the rest of the time.
Sure, it might seem nice to be consistent and wear it every day or to never wear it at all, but it’s just not practical.
That coat is just like the famous Oxford Comma.
Continue reading “The Oxford Comma: Preventing chaos or a waste of space?”
If you’ve ever felt disgruntled, have you also felt gruntled?
It turns out that you probably have.
“Gruntle,” much to my gruntlement, is actually a word that means, “to put in a good humor,” according to the Merriam Webster Dictionary and “happy or contented,” according to Dictionary.com.
Looking around the internet thing, there are several websites that attempt to explain the long history of gruntled and disgruntled, but frankly I can’t follow along without getting distracted. But if I could follow along, would that mean I was tracted? Continue reading “The disconnect over dis: It’s great to be gruntled, but bad to be cussed”
If a meeting is “pushed back” or “moved up” in time, what exactly does that mean?
I have had this conversation with several people recently who did not understand what I meant when I used these phrases.
Normally, I would just automatically assume that they were wrong and I was correct, but this time I thought I should take their opinions into consideration and study the issue further before deciding they are wrong.
Continue reading “The confusion over events being ‘pushed back’ or ‘moved up’ and a few solutions”
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