Here at Weird Words, I could never do these columns without a good dictionary — several, in fact. At the same time, I also couldn’t do them if I had to check every single word in every dictionary I own. (Trust me — that is starting to get out of hand.) So I have 5-6
“My whole way of viewing life has changed,” says one participant in the C. S. Lewis Institute, which is now taking registrants for its second year in Central PA. With branches in Pittsburgh, Carlisle and Philadelphia — along with 11 other states and such countries as Ireland, Japan and Kenya — CSLI was named for
According to Britannica’s website, there may have been two men named Valentine — both dating back to ancient times. Both were Christian martyrs, while one was patron saint of lovers — though he’s also associated with epileptics and beekeepers. Since this doesn’t sound terribly romantic, I tend to sidestep Valentine-related terms here at “Weird Words”
Send Help is a new thriller about two people stranded on an island. Since it opened after this article was written, I haven’t seen it — though I suspect it’s too bloody for some of our “family-friendly” readers. (After all, director Sam Raimi — whose resume includes several Spider-Man movies and the sadly neglected Simple
Here at Webb’s “Weird Words,” our stock-in-trade is presenting lists of oddball vocab — complete with pronunciation, part of speech, definitions and sundry other info on origin and usage. But we’ve been on a lengthy hiatus from that, covering the Broadway revival of Waiting for Godot (loaded with unusual language) and then moving on to
