Group items tagged usage - LumpysCorner

shared by John Lemke on 23 Feb 14 - No Cached

The earliest meaning of anecdote in English is “Secret, private, or hitherto unpublished narratives or details of history.” Later, the word came to have its present meaning: “The narrative of a detached incident, or of a single event, told as being in itself interesting or striking.”
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The adjective anecdotal dates from the 18th century. It can mean simply “pertaining to anecdotes,” but in modern usage it is often used in the sense of “unreliable.”
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shared by John Lemke on 18 Dec 13 - No Cached

Set Your Rate.
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Write What You Want.
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Wait For a Buyer. The downside to working through Constant-Content, however, is that there is no guarantee your work will sell. Ever.
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You can sell usage rights only, which allows you to resell your article over and over again.
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shared by John Lemke on 05 May 14 - No Cached

In regard to American usage, the Chicago Manual of Style recommends that writers consult Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary for “tricky” compounds like fathers-in-law, courts-marital, and chefs d’oeuvre, adding, “For those not listed, common sense can usually provide the answer.”
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Compound nouns are of three kinds: open, closed, and hyphenated.
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Some speakers have trouble with nouns that end in -ful, puzzling, for example, between cupfuls and cupsful. This is a case in which common sense should probably advise against consulting M-W. Although the M-W entries for cupful, handful, and armful list the plurals cupfuls, handfuls, and armfuls first, they give cupsful, handsful, and armsful as alternative spellings. In addition, the spelling handfull is in there as an “also.” My American spellchecker does not countenance any of these alternatives. Cupsful doesn’t cut it because compound nouns are made up of two or more words that can be used on their own. For example, the words in the compound policeman can be used separately: “The man called for the police.” The element ful in cupful is not a word; it’s a suffix. Common sense tells me that cupsful is incorrect.
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shared by John Lemke on 27 Dec 13 - No Cached

shared by John Lemke on 28 Aug 14 - No Cached

In modern usage, the form a is used in front of words that begin with a consonant sound; an is used in front of words that begin with a vowel sound.
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shared by John Lemke on 29 Jun 14 - No Cached

cynic comes from a Greek word meaning “dog-like, currish, churlish.”
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The word cynosure comes from a Greek word meaning “dog’s tail.” This was the name given by the Greeks to the northern constellation Ursa Minor, the “Small Bear” in whose tail is the Pole-star, also known as the North Star. Because the North Star is bright and a means of finding the direction of north, the word cynosure acquired the figurative meaning of “something that is bright and serves as a guide.”
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In modern usage, a cynic is a person disposed to find fault with everything and to rant about it to everyone. A cynic trusts no one’s sincerity or good intentions. The adjective is cynical; the noun is cynicism.
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Unlike cynic, the word cynosure has positive connotations. A cynosure is someone or something that serves for guidance or direction, a “guiding star.
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