Trickeration. Blowback. Ginormous. Lest you think I'm coming up with Huffington Post headline ideas, these are just three of the dozen words added to this year's list of banished vocabulary. Diction has been a hot topic here of late: last week, James R. offered his thoughts on banishing, or at least curbing, our use of the word "literally."
Read MoreWhat follows is not an attempt at grammar Nazism, even though the first thing that pops up when you google the word “literally” is a definition that includes the words “not literally.”
Read MoreWhere do the weird words of our world fall within the approval matrix of today’s writers? Do words like “lunule” (the ivory crescent of a fingernail tip) and “gynecomastia” (man boobs) poeticize or demystify the peculiarities of everyday life? In short, is obscure vocab savvy an in or an out?
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