play video drive safe ly
Usage Notes

Drive Safe: In Praise of Flat Adverbs

You don't have to end all your adverbs in -ly to talk right.


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play video drive safe ly
Drive Safe: In Praise of Flat Adverbs

 

You don't have to end all your adverbs in -ly to talk right.

play video title attorney generals
Is It 'Attorney Generals' Or 'Attorneys General'?

 

'Poets laureate'? 'Court-martials'? The curious history of postpositive adjectives in English.

play is none singular or plural video
Is 'none' singular or plural?

 

Or both? Or neither?

play video cynic
The History of 'Cynic'

 

How an ancient philosophical movement devoted to the pursuit of virtue came to describe eye-rolling criticism.

play video how a word gets into the dicionary
How a Word Gets into the Dictionary

 

What our editors are looking for when they enter words in Merriam-Webster.

play video soup vs soop
An Abbreviated History of American English Spelling

 

Soop, wimmen, and headake did not make the cut

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The True Story of the Backward Index

 

These people needed a computer