Recent Posts
The Engine Room
Return To Blog Listing
A blog about English language use, publishing and the media in general – brought to you by a sub-editor (copy editor) on a weekly UK magazine and his former chief sub.
If you have a question about vocabulary, grammar or punctuation, why not ask
Recent Posts Tagged With 'word of the day'
Word of the day: microperfed
The notebook I use at work is "microperfed", which I assume means it has tiny perforations.To my surprise, the word throws up a respectable 25,400 results on Google (and that's not including variations such as "micro-perfed").It's not only paper that...
Word of the day: leave-behinds
So I was on a course recently and one of the speakers had prepared handouts for everyone.Except he didn't hand them out - he left them behind. And he didn't call them handouts, he called them 'leave-behinds'.I'd never come across this word before (al...
Word of the day: mumpreneur
Here's the front cover of the summer issue of Mums in Control magazine (Sutton, Cheam and Belmont edition).I'm sharing it with you because one of the coverlines includes the portmanteau 'mumpreneurs'. A mumpreneur is, I'm assuming, someone who is bot...
Word of the day: Māori sidestep
I came across an interesting rugby-related word (or phrase, if you prefer) in conversation the other day: 'Māori sidestep'. I suppose it could also be written as 'Māori side step', Maori sidestep', or 'Maori side step'...The best definition I could...
Word of the day: hack
I'm currently reading the anthology London: City of Disappearances, edited by Iain Sinclair. One of the essays in the collection, Alan Wall's 'Grub Street', has a lot of interest to say on the word 'hack' (as in hack writer or journalist).If I could,...
X marks the spot
While reading a 1960s science fiction anthology this afternoon I came across the adjective papuliferous. It stopped me dead in my tracks but my OED Concise revealed that a papula is a pimple. A quick check via Google took me to wordsmith.org which ha...
Word of the day: pre-loading (in its alcoholic sense)
Pre-loading: "drinking cheap booze at home or in streets before going on to pubs and clubs"; "drinking heavily discounted alcohol before going out" (both definitions from the Addaction website)I came across today's word of the day, 'pre-loading', in ...
Word of the day: Panamax
Although the word 'Panamax' does occasionally crop up in the publications I work for, I've chosen it as a word of the day mainly because I like the way it sounds.But what does it mean? As Wikipedia says:"Panamax" ships are of the maximum dimensions t...
Word of the day: pixelation/pixilation
My version of Microsoft Word automatically changes 'pixelation' to 'pixilation'. That's annoying, but it's also interesting – for three reasons.1. Word doesn't automatically correct 'pixelate' to 'pixilate'. Why the inconsistency?2. In contrast to ...
Word of the day: Uniqulture
I came across this word in issue six of a free publication called Gravity Guide, "your local music and lifestyle guide to South and East London".According to page 5:South East London is the home of Uniqulture (multi-culture without divisions); it is ...
Word of the day: bustitution
I've made another serendipitous discovery on Wikipedia!The noun 'bustitution' is a portmanteau of 'bus' and 'substitution', and can be used to refer to the temporary or permanent replacement of train services with bus services.It has given rise to a ...
