Baseball

“I wrote 63 songs this year. They’re all about Jeter.” Just kidding. The game we love, the players we hate, and more.

Culture and Criticism

From Norman Mailer to Wendy Pepper — everything on film, TV, books, music, and snacks (shut up, raisins), plus the Girls’ Bike Club.

Donors Choose and Contests

Helping public schools, winning prizes, sending a crazy lady in a tomato costume out in public.

Stories, True and Otherwise

Monologues, travelogues, fiction, and fart humor. And hens. Don’t forget the hens.

The Vine

The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!

Home » Archive by Tags

Articles tagged with: our friend English

Word Of The Day: “pwaft”
September 21, 2010 – 5:21 PM | 14 Comments
Word Of The Day: “pwaft”

I suspect that “pwaft” needs no definition, but I will let you supply your own in the comments section for a while and then formally update the entry.
Update: “Pwaft” is both a noun and a …

TN Read-Along #4 Discussion Thread: Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words
September 9, 2010 – 8:42 PM | 28 Comments
TN Read-Along #4 Discussion Thread: <I>Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words</I>

A very informative read, if somewhat discouraging (nearly every page contains a word or phrase I’ve misused for years), and if I had it to do again, I wouldn’t read it straight through; the book’s …

Update!: Jerk of Art
August 31, 2010 – 11:52 AM | 5 Comments
Update!: Jerk of Art

It’s naïve to expect anything in the way of nuanced criticism from The Brooklyn Paper, but the unlubricated Andy Rooneying to which it subjected Work of Art on the front page of the rag’s arts …

Tomato Nation Read-Along #4: Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words
August 31, 2010 – 9:29 AM | 7 Comments
Tomato Nation Read-Along #4: <I>Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words</I>

Our next book, by a hair, is Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer’s Guide to Getting It Right. I tremble to think of all the words I’m about to find out I’ve been using …

Anti-Word Of The Day: “rave-up”
June 14, 2010 – 10:25 PM | 32 Comments
Anti-Word Of The Day: “rave-up”

The Anti-Word Of The Day is, as you have probably guessed, not a word or term I want to catch on, but rather one which I would like to drop headfirst into a vat of …

Words Of The Day: “dorkasualty,” “tremendouche”
May 24, 2010 – 12:08 PM | 44 Comments
Words Of The Day: “dorkasualty,” “tremendouche”

I coined “dorkasualty” just now, after giving myself a two-knuckle paper cut with the Chicago Manual. The 16.42 entry on documentation now looks like I used it as a hot-dog bun. Earlier today, I dropped …

Coffee Talk
May 10, 2010 – 9:20 AM | 167 Comments
Coffee Talk

I have a couple of questions about coffee — about the word “coffee,” the ways we use it, not about the beverage itself.
The first one: “coffee black.” I don’t order my coffee in the same …

The Yankee Years
April 23, 2009 – 4:11 PM | 12 Comments
<I>The Yankee Years</I>

On balance, an excellent read in spite of some frustrating overwriting.Plum-colored prose is a frequent fault of baseball books that I can tolerate at some times better than at others; here it’s bothersome because Verducci …

TV Question Qorner: ESPN’s grief management, Coach the dragon-slayer, et cetera
April 11, 2009 – 12:55 AM | 11 Comments
TV Question Qorner: ESPN’s grief management, Coach the dragon-slayer, et cetera

Baseball Tonight. No doubt they meant well, and what happened to Nick Adenhart is undeniably a tragic waste, but Thursday’s Very Special Episode seemed to me like cynical pandering.I can barely trust BT to tell …

“Seriously, was anybody editing this thing?”
April 5, 2009 – 10:56 PM | 32 Comments
“Seriously, was <I>anybody</I> editing this thing?”

The other day, I received an email from reader Todd K in which he crabbed at length about Jeff Pearlman’s new book on Roger Clemens.I had just read in Sports Illustrated‘s baseball preview issue that …