Words and all that

Interesting words I encountered while meandering through the blogosphere:

razzia (RAZ-ee-uh), n. -- a plundering raid, as in "The United States is being overwhelmed by a razzia of uncontrolled immigration."

Those rotten kids and all that texting, I tell you. With the way they abbreviate and make up acronyms and leave grammar behind, they are just ruinin' the English language, ruinin' it, I tell you.

But hold on there, not so fast:

Regular readers will know that I love words, to the point where I used to watch William F. Buckley's "Firing Line," dictionary in hand, just so I could learn new ones. In that spirit, I've decided to create an irregular feature based on "interesting words I encountered while meandering through the blogosphere."

Two today.

farrago (fuh-RAH-goh), n. -- a confused mixture; hodgepodge, medley, as in: "Hillary Clinton's farrago of email explanations gets harder to take with a straight face every day."

Time for one of my periodic rants about the misuse of words. I've encountered two big ones in the same week, one of them twice.

The twofer is "slight" of hand instead of "sleight" of hand to mean prestidigitation, magic, fooling people, etc. Look, they sound the same, but mean different things, 'K? The only correct way to use "slight of hand" is to mean somebody with teeny, tiny hands. One of the goofs was in a newspaper article that should have been edited better, the other in a best-selling novel by an author who should know better.

I'm always on the lookout for good writing tips, both to improve my own work and to pass along to others who want to do likewise. Here's a good piece with six tips from Harvard's Steven Pinker. Two are expecially worth mentioning here.

The first is "Don't bury the lead":

Finally, they've come up with a name for our war/not war in Iraq in Syria, and it's exactly the kind of name you would expect for a futile, politically driven operation by an utterly incompetent administration:

More than two months after the U.S. first launched airstrikes against the Islamic State, the military mission has a name: “Inherent Resolve.”

This is one of the most vigorous defenses of free speech you'll ever see:

Little tribute in that headline to Joan Rivers, who might appreciate this if she weren't ailing:

Oh, for God's sake: Paul Ryan's Plan: Rebooting Compassionate Conservatism:

The ex-VP candidate has been touring the country has he formulates an anti-poverty plan Republicans can get behind. Now he’s unveiling some of the details.

[. . .]

If you go to Brighton, Mich., better watch your !@#$% mouth: