Posts about “language”

nikhedonia, noun: The pleasure and satisfaction derived from the anticipation of success. A harmless indulgence, and a prudent one, too, since success comes only to some but nikhedonia is freely available to all.

“Off to golf so early, darling? Hadn’t you better have your little nikhedonia session first? You know how badly you play when your gummata are troubling you.”

from The Superior Person’s Book of Words, by Peter Bowler

You Could NOT Care Less

I can’t stand when people say, “I could care less.” “I could care less,” is one of those little things that drives me absolutely batshit crazy. If you could care less, it means you care. That’s not what you mean when you say that, is it? What you mean is that you don’t care. Someone

How to Handle a Ducking iPhone

For some reason that makes little sense, Apple decided to not include one of the words I use most frequently in the iPhone’s internal dictionary. So if I ever send you a text message saying that something is, “ducking awesome,” or that you need to, “get the duck out,” that is why. A certified Apple

Whether or Not

The words or not never follow the word whether. That’s it. That’s the rule. Whether implies or not. You don’t ever need to say both of them. The words or not should never be spoken. (They should certainly never be written.) Whether implies “or not”. Get it?

Wonderful Phrases

Wonderful Phrases

These all need to make a comeback

Grammar Matters (Still)

Recently I saw a commercial for Sylvan Learning Centers. This is a company that is selling products to help your children do well in school. The ad showed a teenage girl gabbing on the telephone. The voice-over said, “Sally sure can talk fast. We can help her read fast,” or something like that. Apparently grammar

What Is This?

davidgagne.net is the personal weblog of me, David Vincent Gagne. I've been publishing here since 1999, which makes this one of the oldest continuously-updated websites on the Internet.

bartender.live

A few years ago I was trying to determine what cocktails I could make with the alcohol I had at home. I searched the App Store but couldn't find an app that would let me do that, so I built one.

Hemingway

You can read dozens of essays and articles and find hundreds of links to other sites with stories and information about Ernest Hemingway in The Hemingway Collection.