Five hundred years ago, gentlemen used specialized vocabulary when referring to groups of animals. Most of the group names came from The Book of St. Albans, published in 1486. Their etymologies have been lost over the years, but why not have a guess?
Around the eighteenth century, some French farmers called côtiers banded together to work feudal lands. A coterie is an exclusive group who spends time together pursuing common interests.
Dear Prospective Dates,
We need to talk. After a string of meh encounters, it’s time to clear the air: I’m a lady introvert*, and the way you’ve been going about courtship just isn’t working. As an introvert, I need a much lower level of mental stimulation to operate than ambiverts or extroverts require. Though everyone is different, you should know that we introverts don’t like “typical” dating approaches.
How do you make octopus plural? It’s simple!
The plural is octopuses. Why do some dictionaries also list octopi as a possibility? In Latin, some plurals end with an i. The problem is, octopus derives from Greek. The i was a mistake, but so many people adopted it that it became an acceptable alternative. Many people don’t like octopi, and you will rarely see it in edited works, but it does occasionally appear.
Spelling words isn’t always easy, especially when they contain double letters. In this case, the correct spelling is occurred. How can you remember it when you need it?
The best way to remember how to spell occurred is to remember its double set of double consonants. In English, the final letter is doubled when a word of two or more syllables has stress on the final syllable. Occur fits the rule, so there are two Cs and two Rs in occurred.
We tend to look at the world’s problems with sustainable development and environmental troubles as the burning issues of our time. The environmentalist movement has been gaining momentum for the last couple of decades, and at this point, most of us should acknowledge that the world has a problem and that we need to fix it. For those purposes, here’s a short list of influential authors who will help inspire the environmentalist in you.
An direct object is a noun or noun phrase that receives the action of a transitive verb. For example:
Subject=Alice Verb=caught Object=baseball
A direct object answers the question of who(m) or what. In the sentence above, you could determine that ‘baseball’ is a direct object by asking the question: What did Alice catch? She caught the baseball.
Some writers use idioms to “add color” to their writing, while others are adamant about keeping their text as simple as possible. While idioms can certainly clutter your work with unnecessary detail, they may also introduce powerful imagery into your text. Since “knowledge is power,” let’s take a look at the best way to accomplish this.
First, what is an idiom? An idiom is an expression with a figurative meaning that differs from the literal meaning.
