The UK Telegraph recently published an article claiming that emojis were ‘ruining people’s grasp of...
Author - Stan Carey
Hang out with ‘hang’ and ‘hung’
Hang on, don’t hang up yet – hang out a while. The verb hang has impressive versatility, being used...
Diffusion of confusion
English vocabulary has many words that are commonly confused, like flout and flaunt, jive and jibe...
Would you like an espresso – or an expresso?
People take their coffee seriously. For many it’s a highlight (or several) of the day, and woe...
Loath(e) to get it wrong
If you’re loath to slip up in your use of loath and loathe – and loth, for that matter – you’re in...
Disagreements are plenty
When Samuel Johnson wrote his Dictionary in the 18th century, it broke the mould in several ways...
Macmillan’s thesaurus is a bit different, unusual, special, and...
A thesaurus, as Macmillan Dictionary defines it, provides ‘lists of words that have similar...
Good, better and best rules for comparatives and superlatives
As children or learners we discover that to express an adjective to a higher degree through...
Party on, film catchphrases!
Some films are so popular and linguistically memorable that their lines enter widespread use. It...
Verbing weirds language – but in a good way
Browsing new entries in Macmillan’s Open Dictionary is a good way to follow patterns in English...