signs. countersigns.

1. A hand painted sign beside a country road advertises "MOILE HOME FOR SALE." Catch it from the other direction, and you'll find it's a "MOBILE HOME" available for purchase. Each time I see it, I am freshly baffled by the omission of the "B." I mean, in "MOBILE," it strikes me as an unforgettable…

One Word: Word-Wonder Day 7

"If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent If the unheard, unspoken Word is unspoken, unheard; Still is the unspoken world, the Word unheard, The Word without a word, the Word within The world and for the world; And the light shone in darkness and Against the Word the unstilled world…

of vocabulary: Word-Wonder Day 4

My very first college English professor, who taught the very first course I attended my freshman year and who addressed us as her "dears," used to tell us that we ought to have good vocabularies, but we ought not use them. I was eighteen years old; I had been steeping for six years or so…