Name It
Wednesday January 7, 2009
In our Glossary of Grammatical & Rhetorical Terms, you'll find a name for . . .
- Caroline Kennedy's habit of repeating "you know" (138 times in a recent interview with The New York Times): embolalia
- some "jar-dropping" and "mind-bottling" errors of spelling and pronunciation: eggcorns
- that "spontaneous" remark you rehearsed for days: sprezzatura
- your spell checker's whimsical habit of replacing "Barack Obama" with "Burka Abeam," and "inconvenience" with "incontinence": Cupertino effect
- the small talk that often passes for conversation at work: phatic communion
- the trick of using a single adverb--obviously--to "prove" an unsupported claim: boosting
- comedian Stephen Colbert's way of closing his program by thanking "all the people who made this show possible--thank you, Stephen Colbert": illeism
More Words About Words:
Comments
Most of these are “I knew it!” The rest are ” Huh… well…. now I know.” Thanks!
I had never before seen diaeresis spelled as dieresis (which is an acceptable alternative). Interestingly, your spelling seems to cloud the diaeretic separation, making dieresis appear to be a 3 syllable word pronounced die-ree-sis.