Discreet, discrete

Stop using the latter when you mean the former. This means you--and it's yarmulke, not yamaka, which I might not even quibble with since it's transliterated, but really.

It's monsoon season in Maryland

Sudden violent storms, punctuated by unbearable heat and humidity. It's making me all swoony and out of sorts like Judy Davis in "Passage to India."



How come Asians have better names for weather than we do? I prefer typhoons and cyclones to hurricanes and tornadoes.

Word of the year

W00t wins, says Merriam-Webster.

Merriam-Webster President John Morse said "w00t" reflected the growing use of numeric keyboards to type words.

"People look for self-evident numeral-letter substitutions: 0 for O; 3 for E; 7 for T; and 4 for A," he said. "This is simply a different and more efficient way of representing the alphabetical character."

One Web site, www.thinkgeek.com, already sells T-shirts with the word "w00t" printed on the front.

"w00t belongs to gamers the world over. It seems to have been derived from the obsolete 'whoot' which essentially is another way to say 'hoot' which itself is a shout or derisive laugh," Think Geek said on its Web site.

The Top 10 list is here.

Words that get your panties moist

And not in a good way.Apparently many people--women particularly--cannot stand hearing the word moist. I don't think there's any word that I can't stand. How about you?

Adventuresome

A local chef being interviewed on the radio about fresh produce kept saying, "if you're more adventuresome ..." She must have said it five times. It was driving me crazy. What happened to good old adventurous? I know they're basically the same thing, but it seems I lived my whole life having never heard the word adventuresome spoken until a few years ago and now everybody's saying it. I don't like it.

Another thing I've noticed is that advances--as in advances in medicine--has been almost totally replaced by advancements, which is just plain icky. Who needs that extra syllable?

People used to go into surgery for an operation or a procedure. e.g.: "He had six operations on his knee." Now they go into surgery for for a surgery, e.g.: "She underwent three surgeries before her face looked human again." Have you noticed this evolution?

How about a word analogy: Magazine is to article as blog is to ______?

I see more and more people referring to an item on a blog as a blog, as in: "I wrote a blog last week on the Crimean War." No. No, you didn't. You wrote a post on the Crimean War.

Nobody suffers from lumbago anymore

Which is a pity, because it's a much better term than lower back pain, funnier too. In the same vein, dipsomaniacs are much funnier than drunks--who are pathetic creatures to be pitied--or alcoholics, who are rather pretentious. And while we're at it, I'd rather have dyspepsia than indigestion or the much-too-clinical term, acid reflux disease, which is no fun at all.