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Speaking of Words: Those Silent Consonants

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       We often hear about “silent e,” that magical letter that turns a can into a cane or a glob into a globe, as Tom Lehrer put it in his charming song for the Electric Company many years ago, but a greater problem for English spelling is a large set of silent consonants.

The Days of the Week

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Why is our week composed of seven days and not, say, five days or ten?  The ancient Hebrew answer is that God spent six days creating heaven, the earth, and all living things, and then rested on the seventh day, the Sabbath. 

Speaking of Words: Can Poetry be Translated?

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        So keep reading translations, if you like poetry, and don’t worry too much about what you are missing.  You’re not missing everything, and if some things get lost other things get found.

Speaking of Words: Humorous English

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       If my title leads you to hope this column is about amusing things in English, such as funny words like “hornswoggle” and “discombobulate,” I’m afraid I’ll disappoint you. 

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Speaking of Words: Euphemisms

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Take climate change, for example.  Frank Luntz, a Republican operative who specializes in misleading phrases, recommended to George W. Bush that his administration use that phrase instead of the more honest global warming. 

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Five Words in a Line

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Some friends and I, with too much time on our hands, have long been collecting examples of such expressions, which we call “autonyms.”