I’m a little fussy about past participles. Unjustifiably fussy. It may have to do with the fact that I married someone from small-town Massachusetts, where everything is “I have ate this” and “I ...

The dictionary is gaslighting me. I know I sound crazy, but that’s just proof of gaslighting, right? Let me explain. For years I’ve been telling people that they never have to agonize over whether to ...

There are two main classes of verbs in English: strong and weak. 'Strong' is a historical terms that refers to the of verbs in which the past tense is marked by a change in the base vowel and the ...

The past tense of "read" is a linguistic quirk that often trips up English language learners and even native speakers. While ...

I want to follow up on the topic of language evolution that I took up in my previous newsletter about how the word “satisfying” has taken on a new meaning among many of today’s kids. The bigger theme ...

A RECENT ARTICLE in The Economist on Germany’s coalition talks was given the headline “Green-lit”. Elsewhere, though, we have reported that ventures were “greenlighted”. Another new verb is subject to ...