The Curious Engineer

All blogs / Essays / personal

Grammarphobia

grammarphobia.com

Grammar, etymology, usage, and more, brought to you by Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman

Essays / personal

’10’15’20’25
Posts
4,126 from 13 Aug 2006 to 28 Sep 2026
Posting
weekly (39 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://grammarphobia.com/feed

Latest

September 2026

  1. Trying times
  2. Miss Pym Discomposes

August 2026

  1. Prelude and feud
  2. How ‘works’ works

July 2026

  1. The iffiness of the subjunctive

June 2026

  1. The acronym, initially speaking
  2. Performative gratitude
  3. On ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’
  4. The sense of ‘ill-being’

May 2026

  1. ‘Cutting corners’: A horsey tale
  2. ‘My’ and ‘mine’ shadow
  3. Table talk
  4. Is this use of “on” really off?

April 2026

  1. Why a ‘rise’ can be ‘meteoric’
  2. Making the cut
  3. ‘New albums drop like leaves in the fall’
  4. ‘Thou shalt not loose by it’

March 2026

  1. A thorny question?
  2. ‘A hundred literate children’
  3. When ‘ye’ became ‘you’
  4. On ‘adult’ and ‘adultery’
  5. Let’s go down the ‘rabbit hole’

February 2026

  1. A chimerical journey
  2. How cool was Abe Lincoln?
  3. Osculation: A kiss is still a kiss
  4. On the euphemism treadmill

January 2026

  1. When ‘misery’ rhymes with ‘high’
  2. Has the verb ‘progress’ progressed?
  3. What a fetching Labrador retriever!
  4. Are ‘hopium’ and ‘copium’ nope-iums?

December 2025

  1. How ‘super’ and ‘bowl’ touched down
  2. Gentlemen, God rest you merry!
  3. We dasn’t commit ourselves
  4. Evacuation roots
  5. ‘Went to go see a movie’

November 2025

  1. Gender issues (no, not those)
  2. Genesis: ‘you and I’ v. ‘you and me’
  3. He’s not ‘quite quite,’ you know
  4. Matriculating down the field

October 2025

  1. On fawning and fawns
  2. ‘All Sects, all Ages smack of this vice’
  3. ‘Allude’ and its playful history
  4. A pub, yclept Ye Olde Watering Hole

September 2025

  1. Are you getting antsy?
  2. The short and the long
  3. Why ‘learn by heart,’ not ‘by brain’?
  4. A tidy history of ‘spick and span’
  5. Liwans, porticos, and palaces

August 2025

  1. A ‘bad boy’ can be a good thing
  2. And now, let us digress
  3. When ‘jealousy’ met ‘envy’
  4. Why not ‘ceiling’ of the mouth?

July 2025

  1. Tales of the drawing room
  2. On the banks of the Ohio
  3. Some ‘after’ thoughts
  4. Unpacking ‘emotional baggage’

June 2025

  1. Donjons, dungeons, and dragons
  2. Let us repair to the boudoir
  3. Channeling the talking heads of yore

May 2025

  1. The death of a buddy in Vietnam
  2. On and off the cuff
  3. On criticizing and critiquing
  4. Why are clams happy?

April 2025

  1. One of the best there is
  2. Clawing back in the age of DOGE
  3. On Passover and Easter
  4. Sex, gender, and sociology

March 2025

  1. Befooled, besotted … beclowned?
  2. A horse of a different choler
  3. A ‘heart-wrenching’ sorrow
  4. The ambiguity of ‘disambiguity’
  5. Is coconut milk really milk?

February 2025

  1. ‘Preventive’ or ‘preventative’?
  2. Calling ‘in,’ ‘out,’ or ‘off’ sick?
  3. Cheersing at the pub
  4. A singular dynamic

January 2025

  1. No buts about it
  2. You can’t call me Al
  3. Are you feeling irregular?
  4. This is highway robbery!

December 2024

  1. Uh-oh, it’s the glottal stop
  2. To unalive, or not to unalive
  3. A stink over ‘odoriferous’
  4. We’ll tell you what
  5. ‘Tuckered out’ and ‘tucked in’

November 2024

  1. ‘Generally’ speaking
  2. A new angle on an old word
  3. Cheeseparings from the moon
  4. ‘We’-ism in fact and fiction

October 2024

  1. Is a scaredy-cat scary?
  2. Why is the ‘w’ silent in ‘write’?
  3. Is this an odd use of ‘even’?
  4. Keep your pecker up

September 2024

  1. On books and bribery
  2. Cuddle, huddle, snuggle
  3. People who look like me
  4. Can ‘difficult’ be a verb?
  5. Do let’s have another drink!

August 2024

  1. If money were no object
  2. Looking into ‘leaning into’
  3. May you always walk in sunshine
  4. An accommodating detective

July 2024

  1. We thank you kindly
  2. The stylish origin of ‘tag along’
  3. Rhyme and reason in Shakespeare
  4. On the truckling arts
  5. Whence the silent ‘c’ in ‘indict’?

June 2024

  1. Playing the etymology card
  2. ‘Ever more,’ ‘ever-more,’ ‘evermore’
  3. On ‘as such’ and its ‘as-suchness’
  4. A wussy pronunciation

May 2024

  1. Beholden to a schedule?
  2. Like hell, like mad, like stink
  3. Oh, dear! Oh, deer!
  4. Footing the bill

April 2024

  1. Mixed marriage: two ways to wed
  2. The earliest English writing
  3. Left for dead
  4. Did you warsh behind your ears?
  5. ‘Dad wouldn’t have a bar of it’

March 2024

  1. Wanna look like a chumbolone?
  2. How unnatural is ‘preternatural’?
  3. ‘You had your will of me’
  4. When ‘like’ means ‘lack’

February 2024

  1. A tale of tricky endings
  2. On ‘giving’ and ‘giving back’
  3. Don’t sweat the small stuff
  4. A tale of two suffixes

January 2024

  1. The first exclamation point!
  2. Wordle fancies: ‘bezel’ vs. ‘bevel’
  3. Bookworms, in etymology & entomology
  4. Gob on a stick
  5. Speaking of the silent final ‘e’

December 2023

  1. Some ‘randy’ thoughts
  2. A note to our readers
  3. Something wicked this way comes
  4. Dog days: Are you pooped?
  5. Happy Chanucha & Merry Xpes mæsse

November 2023

  1. When ‘stopping’ means ‘staying’
  2. Why we’re in cahoots
  3. The rustle of a print dress
  4. The purple haze of autumn

October 2023

  1. Why ‘sightseeing,’ not ‘siteseeing’?
  2. When a diet is a journey
  3. A chorus of exclamation points
  4. Caesar’s wife in Shakespeare
  5. Upon my word!

September 2023

  1. Why a ‘beef’ is a complaint
  2. How ‘chintz’ became ‘chintzy’
  3. Is this ‘which’ dead?

Every year

2026 302025 502024 532023 532022 642021 1122020 1102019 1482018 1562017 1572016 1602015 1652014 2172013 2632012 3452011 3832010 3802009 3952008 3772007 3672006 141