This week’s obscure English word is variorum. It means an edition of an author’s work, with notes by a variety of editors, and often with variations on the main text. Your challenge? Write a sentence (or two) in the comments using this word. Copyright © Matthew Wright 2018 Advertisements
I discovered the other day that it’s 81 years this month since The Hobbit was published. I’d missed the anniversary. The Hobbit is just about my favourite book of all time. The other, naturally, is its sequel. I first read it around 1973, inspired by the Pauline Baynes map of Middle Earth – a wondrous … More Happy birthday to The Hobbit
This year a whole swag of my older print books have been brought back into print as second editions. They’ve also come with new covers – strongly branded, themed, and to my mind highly evocative of the subject matter. I thought I might feature them for a few weeks, starting this week with the cover … More This week’s feature book cover
This week’s obscure English word is extempore. Extempore – something done on the spur of the moment, or spoken without preparation. Your challenge? Write a sentence (or two) in the comments using this word. Copyright © Matthew Wright 2018
One of the most ubiquitous grammar traps in English is the sentence fragment. A sentence fragment is a phrase or set of phrases that look like they should be a sentence, but actually aren’t. Usually that’s because they lack either a verb or a subject, making them a ‘dependent clause’, because they depend on another … More Explaining the pitfalls of sentence fragments
1. Ernest Eldridge’s monster Fiat, Mephistopheles Back in 1923, British racing legend Ernest Eldridge bought an old Fiat racing car cheap after it had ‘blown’ a couple of cylinders at Brooklands. He lengthened the chassis and installed a 21.5 litre aero-engine developing 350 hp, driving the rear wheels by chain. He promptly broke the standing-start … More Three deco-era things I don’t own… yet…
This week’s obscure English word is tousle. It means to make something, usually hair, untidy, and is derived from a Middle English word, ‘tous’. Your challenge? Write a sentence (or two) in the comments using this word. Copyright © Matthew Wright 2018
