Thursday, July 16, 2009

A double-headed headline

Head(line) hunting: This newspaper headline — Lawyers Give Poor Free Legal Advice — can be taken two ways. It either means that the poor are getting free legal advice, or it means that the lawyers are just giving out bad advice for free.

Found online: It is still uncertain what his roll in the formation will be.... I think they mean role, not roll.

Simply magical: Yesterday, we looked at several words. Today, we'll do one.

We won't go into detail, but magic has been used to explain unexplainable events, and it's been used, via sleight of hand, to entertain us. And it's a word used to describe the enchantment of the works of Walt Disney.

The etymology: The word magic comes from Middle English magik, from Old French magique, from Late Latin magica, from Latin magic, from Greek magik, and from the feminine of magikos.

The streak: I just found a story about a football team having signed all of its rookies each of the last two years. It said the team wanted to run the streak to three consecutive years. The problem? If it's a streak, you don't need the word consecutive; it's implied.


CONTACT: Email me at tgilli52@gmail.com or nc3022@yahoo.com. Also, my Twitter handle is EDITORatWORK.


Entries from The Dog Blog
Blog entries from The Auto Racing Journal
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)

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Anecdotes by Tom Gillispie

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