This Book is Banned

T
he first thing we notice about a birthday cake is the icing. And who doesn’t love a good butter cream? But there’s more to these delicious delicacies than just frosting. Without the rich, baked layers that gives it substance a cake’s icing would be little more than a puddle of sugary goo.

And the same goes for novels. The first thing we notice is the plot. And ...

J
ack of all trades. This idiom has deep historical roots that stretch back to medieval England. The oldest part of this phrase is the name Jack. It was widely used as a generic term for a common fellow, a laborer perhaps, or a servant during the Middle Ages. What we would call an “ordinary Joe” today.

This usage of...

This Week’s Fun & Fancy Word Is:

Contronyms are one of the things that make language fun. Or frustrating depending on your perspective. They’re also known as Janus words, after the Roman two-faced god. So named because they are words that have contradictory meanings depending on their context. [1]

Consider the verb dust, for example...

P
eople have been telling stories since the dawn of time. But, storytelling has never been just about entertainment. Why are books written, then, if not for readers’ gratification?

As Ursula K. Le Guin points out, “There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”[1] That said, as much as some...

A
nyone who stops learning is old. This aphorism comes from Henry Ford…  you know, founder of the Ford Motor company. Ford went on to say that this is the case whether we choose to stop learning “at twenty or at eighty.”[1]

Ford was clearly making a distinction between biological age and mental or cognitive age. Nee...