Fiction and non-fiction literature that teaches profound life lessons and gives you food for thought. These books and quotes will deeply change you. Compilations of interesting and rare words to enrich your vocabulary.
There are two people I credit for my love of old English words. They are my dad and an English teacher in high school. Whenever my dad would read me and my siblings a bedtime story, he’d occasionally come across a word we didn’t recognise. Instead of simply telling us…
If you have ever read anything by Fyodor Dostoevsky, you know that the literary works of this existentialist Russian author of the 19th century are certainly not for ‘light reading’. ‘Crime and Punishment’ is probably his most famous novel and also one of the most difficult to read. First published…
I remember reading Macbeth at school and being instantly beguiled. Here was a world rich with layered meaning, coloured by vivid metaphors and expertly finessed into a captivating moral story. But I didn’t realise at that young age there were words Shakespeare invented that we still use today. I’m not…
George Bernard Shaw wrote: “England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” It’s easy to see why. For example, if an American offered biscuits in gravy to a British citizen, they would likely be met with confusion. Likewise, it’s probably not a good idea for Americans to…
I love the English language. The way you can use words to express a thought or paint a picture is something that makes us human. However, some words do us no favors. I’m talking about English slang words. Don’t get me wrong, I use a few of the following examples…
When it comes to commonly mispronounced words, I have a really bad habit. If I don’t know how to pronounce a word, I’ll just skim over it and carry on reading. Then one night, I watched 'Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy'. There was a scene where he was trying…
Sometimes I want to describe a situation where a person is a complete jerk, but I don’t want to use that particular word. It’s not that I‘m being pretentious, it’s more that the word doesn’t quite fit the circumstances. It was only when I started looking for alternatives that I…
As long as I can remember, I’ve had a love of the English language. I think it comes from my father. Whenever I came across unusual words, he would treat it as an adventure of sorts. ‘Look it up’, he’d say, all the while giving me clues as to the…
