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Word Nerd Wednesday – TRANSFORMATIVE LOAD
Years ago, I read about a woman who decided to try a crazy experiment. She wanted to see if an average person could realistically do everything Oprah Winfrey told her audience to do – on TV, in books, and in magazines – at the same time. She planned to try for a year. It only … Read more
Word Nerd Wednesday – PYRAMID
It’s no surprise that I love word games. Wordle, Letter Boxed, and the Mini Crossword are part of my morning routine. Sometimes I’ll try a newer game, too. Called Connections, it challenges players to group 12 seemingly random words into four clusters based on what those four words have in common. Sometimes the links are … Read more
Word Nerd Wednesday – BORING
“Brilliantly boring since 1865.” That’s the tagline for a campaign PNC Bank introduced in 2024. Most marketing campaigns make me cringe, but this didn’t. I loved it the moment I heard it. Why? It shows how a single word can change the tone and impact of a message. There are at least a half a … Read more
Word Nerd Wednesday – COMPILATION
Next Wednesday is Christmas, so this will be my last #WordNerdWednesday of 2024. To wrap up (pun totally intended!), I put together a compilation of the 5 most popular words/posts this year. Here’s a quick summary. To read the original posts go to: https://megan-burns.com/category/blog/word-nerd-wednesday/best-of-2024/ Did any of these (or any other WNW post) resonate particularly … Read more
Word Nerd Wednesday – SNAKE OIL
Scams are everywhere these days, but they aren’t new. Unscrupulous people have been selling fake products for centuries. These fraudsters are often called “snake oil salesmen.” Smithsonian Magazine published an article recently that explains why. Here’s a summary: The term dates back to the 1890s when a man named Clark Stanley started selling bottles of … Read more
Word Nerd Wedneday – PLEONASM
Grammar checking tools can be great help, but the one I use has been driving me nuts lately. It keeps flagging an error in sentences that seem perfectly reasonable to me. For example, if I write “her own” or “exactly the same,” it says I need to cut unnecessary words. Technically, the words “own” and … Read more
Word Nerd Wednesday – THANKS
#WordNerdWednesday Somehow it took me nearly half a century to wonder where the word “thanks” comes from. Turns out it’s not a complicated story. Our modern “thanks” seems to derive from similar Old English (panc), Old Norse (pokk) and German (dank) words meaning roughly “good will” and “to remember or think of fondly, with gratitude.” … Read more
Word Nerd Wednesday – CLOCK
#WordNerdWednesday Big Ben is one of the most famous clocks in the world. Except it’s not technically a clock. It’s the 16-ton bell that rings when the Clock of Westminster hits the top of each hour. I understand why people are confused, though. The English word “clock” derives from the French word “cloche,” which means … Read more
Word Nerd Wednesday – ALGORITHM
Algorithms are everywhere. But what, exactly, are they? Where did they come from? The general definition of “algorithm” is “a step by step procedure for solving a problem.” For centuries, the only people who talked about algorithms were mathematicians. They originated with ancient Middle Eastern scholars and were brought to the west by Persian polymath … Read more
