I was just reading an article in Time about George Clooney, which quotes him as saying “I know what pisses people off about fame. It’s when famous people whine about it.” The phrase “when famous people whine about it” can be interpreted either as adverbial or substantive. That is, it can be telling us that [...]

Every time I talk with my boss, there’s an exchange something like this:
“Hi Matthew, how are you doing?”
“Good, how are you?”
“I’m doing well!”
There was a time when someone would ask me how I was doing and I would answer simply “well.” That was a few years ago, and I was trying to make my English [...]

A few days ago my boss sent me an email containing this sentence: “Don’t have to fill it out yet, but let’s get the table crafted.” Of course, he wasn’t trying for poetry; he was just writing quickly. Still, I was attracted by the adroit way he handled the word “don’t.”
You probably noticed that the [...]

Have you ever wondered whether the earth actually has a face? The Oxford English Dictionary says that “the face of the earth” is a Hebraistic idiom imported into English via the Bible and attested from 1340.
At any rate, I have some use for the handy metaphor right now, because I am about to drop off [...]