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Title of Grammarphobia: "Grammarphobia: Grammar, etymology, linguistics, usage"
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Q: I’ve been hearing the word “hopium” used for an imaginary opiate taken to achieve unrealistic optimism, and “copium” used for one taken to endure hard times. I don’t see them in my dictionary. Are they legit?
A: Well, one standard dictionary, Collins, recognizes both “hopium” and “copium” while anothe...
Q: After reading your recent article about Hank Stram’s coining a football sense of “matriculate,” I remembered reading a long way back that Stram also coined “Super Bowl.”
A: No, Hank Stram didn’t c...
[Note: In observation of Christmas week, we’re republishing a post that originally appeared on Dec. 23, 2022.]
Q: Which is the more traditional version of this Christmas carol: “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen” or “God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen”? I see it both ways, but the one with “you” looks better to me.
A: Yo...
Q: I thought I might further muddy the waters of the wonderful word featured in your post about “dasn’t.” I once saw it defined as a contraction of “darest not,” but frustratingly I can’t recall the source. I first saw “dasn’t” as a y...
Q: I was catching up with The Wire, the TV crime series. In episode one of season five, originally aired in 2008, editors at The Baltimore Sun tell a reporter that a building is evacuated, not a person, except when given an enema. I looked in a number of dictionaries and they disagree. Where did this myth come from?
