Rob’s Megaphone

English has got to be one of the toughest languages to learn. Even our exceptions to the rules have exceptions.
Here are some of my recent mental meanderings on mixed up meanings.
Confusing homophones
1.                  This bimonthly publication comes out every other month, and that bimonthly publication comes             
                              out twice a month. Both sentences are correct.
2.                  Loan (verb) me [...]

The word SET has the most definitions of any word in the English language.
SET has 464 definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Here’s how the others stack up:
RUN – 396 (defs.)
           GO – 368
          TAKE – 343
          STAND – 334
          GET – 289
          TURN – 288
          PUT – 268
          FALL – 264
          STRIKE – 250

set 1 
v. [...]

In one of my first posts titled Evolving Language, we saw that with over 600,000 words, English contains more words than any language in human history. That posts explored how the English language acquires new words. This post adds another dimension; it is another piece to the puzzle we call the English language. In the [...]

A bicycle can’t stand alone; it is two tired.                                                                        
A will is a dead giveaway.
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.
A backward poet writes inverse.
In a democracy it’s your vote that counts; in feudalism, it’s your Count that votes.
A chicken crossing the road: poultry in motion.
If you don’t pay your exorcist you can [...]

Most of us use Nutty English expression to mean something entirely different than what we are actually saying. 
What is said-What is meant-Why it’s nutty

I could care less – I couldn’t care less - think about it. 
 
I miss not seeing you – I miss seeing you – unless you’re breaking up. 
 
A non-stop flight – A flight with no intermediate [...]

What’s so hard about learning English? 
Nothing compared to teaching English as a Second Language to really
smart students who love to ask “Why?”
 
Day 1 lesson plan – Explain why:
quicksand is slow
A guinea pig is not a pig, and it is not from Guinea.
A boxing ring is square
the blackbird hen is brown,
blackboards can be [...]

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IzqJtxoWzM&hl=en]

One should never generalize.

Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”

Comparisons are as bad as cliches.

Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.

It behooves you to avoid archaic expressions.

Avoid archaeic spellings too.

Understatement is always best.

Exaggeration is [...]

CATOPTROMANCY

Divination by means of mirrors.
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who is the fairest of them all?” At some time or other, almost anything you can think of has been used to foretell the future, from straws on a red-hot iron to disembowelled chickens. But the mirror, that most strange thing that allows not only [...]

BAFFLEGAB

Incomprehensible or pretentious verbiage.
This word hit the newspapers and public notice on 19 January 1952, the day after a plaque was presented to its inventor to mark his creation of this invaluable word. He was Milton A Smith, assistant general counsel for the US Chamber of Commerce. It was presented by Michael V DiSalle, the [...]