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by Liz Walter
Today’s post is about ways of talking about someone’s intelligence. Interestingly, there are some subtle differences in the way British and American speakers use what are probably the two most common synonyms for intelligent: clever and smart.
Continue reading “Wise, brainy, or astute: words for describing intelligent people”
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This week, I’m looking at the language we use to say that things or people are similar, either in appearance or character. There are a tremendous lot of interesting words and phrases in this area so this post will be in two parts. Continue reading “Alike and analogous (Talking about similarities, Part 1)”
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In my last post, I looked at a range of collocations for the words ‘famous’ and ‘fame’. This week, I’m continuing the ‘fame’ theme but considering synonyms (and near-synonyms) for the adjective ‘famous’. As ever, I’m looking at the precise differences in meaning and use between them. Continue reading “Renowned and celebrated (Words meaning ‘famous’)”
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by Liz Walter
Back in 2016, my colleague Kate Woodford wrote a pair of posts on ways of describing good and bad things. However, sometimes things aren’t particularly good or bad, but somewhere in between. This post covers a selection of words and phrases you can use in these cases. Continue reading “It’ll have to do: talking about things that aren’t very good or very bad”
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Today I’m looking at words that mean ‘very or extremely large’. You’ll already know several words in this area – adjectives such as enormous, huge and massive – so I won’t focus on those. Instead, I’ll look at a set of adjectives that you might not know. Most have rather similar meanings. The differences are mainly found in the register of the words, that is, whether they are formal or informal. Continue reading “Vast, mahoosive and monstrous (Words meaning ‘very large’)”
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This post is for anyone who feels they use the words ‘surprised’ and ‘shocked’ too much and is looking for more interesting alternatives. It will include both single words and phrases. Continue reading “Stunned and thunderstruck (Words for being surprised or shocked)”
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by Liz Walter
I have recently written two posts on the topic of importance, so this one looks at the opposite: how to say that something isn’t important. Continue reading “There’s bigger fish to fry: talking about things that are not important”
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Today, I’m looking at the various words that we use to describe things that are unusual or in some way different. As usual, I’ll be looking at the subtle differences in meaning between this group of near-synonyms. Continue reading “Quirky and novel: ways of saying that something is unusual (1)”
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by Liz Walter
This is the second of two posts on importance and covers some more aspects of the topic.
I will start with things that are important because of their effect on someone or something else. Someone or something that has the power to affect things can be described as influential. Something that has a great effect on future events is momentous, or – even more emphatically – seismic: Continue reading “Making a song and dance about it: talking about importance (2)”
by Liz Walter
Becoming an adjective is a strange kind of memorial, but it is often a sign of a person having had real influence on the world.
Science is full of examples, from Hippocrates, the Greek medic born around 460 BC, who gave his name to the Hippocratic Oath still used by doctors today, to Robert Brown, the 19th century botanist who discovered Brownian motion.
In cases where most people know something of the life or work of the person in question, their adjective often takes on a broader meaning. Although Darwinian often simply means ‘as described or discovered by Charles Darwin’, it is also used more generally to describe a fierce competitive situation (in business, for example), in which the losers will be eliminated.
Similarly, if we describe something as Freudian (from Sigmund Freud), we are often alluding to something that inadvertently reveals someone’s true thoughts, as in the phrase Freudian slip. Continue reading “Byronic, Orwellian and Darwinian: adjectives from names.”