linguistics
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Tender Hooks, Expresso, and Other Malapropisms That Will Make People Laugh at You
In the immortal words of Mike Tyson after losing a fight, “I might just fade into Bolivian.” Tyson was answering a reporter’s question about where he would go next in his career — and he meant that state of being blissfully unconscious or unaware of what’s happening, or “oblivion.” Oops.
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How to Stop Saying ‘Like’ (and Other Distracting Filler Words)
If you’ve ever listened to someone, like, pepper everything they say with, like, a never-ending litany of likes, ums, or ahs, you know it can be distracting and — whether fair or not — can diminish what they’re saying. We all occasionally lean on verbal crutches, or what academics call “disfluencies” when we’re nervous, distracted,…
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Can You Change (or Save) Your Accent?
Your accent says a lot about you: It tells someone where you were raised, hints at your ethnicity, and gives out clues about your social class and economic circumstances. Even though the details of your life obviously change long after your accent is “set,” there is still a lot people can guess about you from…
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Rein vs. Reign, and Other Tricky Homophones You’re Mixing Up All the Time
Homophones are words that sound alike but have different meanings, and usually different spellings. Some are easy to distinguish (plane and plain, flower and flour — though I still pause and reflect every time I need to write “cauliflower”) and some are harder. Here, we’ll focus on the trickier ones people easily get tripped up…