1. Clichés, Word Banning, and Cherries

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    May 21, 2025 by libroshombre

                “Keep your eye on the ball” has to be one of baseball’s most fundamental clichés in teaching batting skills, …
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    Category: African American, baseball, grammar, history, libraries, Library of Congress, politicians, politics, sports | Tags: , , , , ,

  2. Reduplications, Great Shifts, and Free Speech

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    May 12, 2025 by libroshombre

                Reading my old copy of “Dictionary of American Slang” (DAS), compiled by Harold Wentworth and Stuart Flexner in 1960, …
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    Category: book banning, books, English language, grammar, language, languages, libraries, slang | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

  3. Bad Boys, Poison Bookmarks, and Kindness

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    May 12, 2025 by libroshombre

                Lately differences are seemingly everywhere.  Stephen Covey, author of the 1989 hit self-help book, “The 7 Habits of Highly …
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    Category: artificial intelligence, insects, kindness, manners, nursery rhymes | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

  4. Bees, Theopneustic, and OK

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    May 12, 2025 by libroshombre

                The great Beverly Sills liked to say, “There are no shortcuts to any place worth going,” and that’s certainly …
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    Category: abbreviations, games, grammar, Learning, parts of speech, spelling, texting, texts, vocabulary | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

  5. Cockroaches, Melting Hearts, and Mark Twain’s Library

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    May 12, 2025 by libroshombre

    Getting from having a cockroach to Mark Twain’s death-defying miracle started with reflecting on weird idioms, “a group of words …
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    Category: books, grammar, languages, libraries, love, printers, printing | Tags: , , , , , ,

  6. Oldest Languages, Harmful Tablets, and Cryptomnesia

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    March 24, 2025 by libroshombre

                Robert Louis Stevenson might have been right when he claimed that “Language is but a poor bull’s eye lantern …
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    Category: deaf-mute, deafness, hearing, languages, linguistics | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

  7. Nougats, Milkys, and Santa Fe No. 9s

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    March 24, 2025 by libroshombre

                John Cheever once said, “Fear tastes like a rusty knife and do not let her into your house. John …
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    Category: candy, horticulture, libraries, peppers, plants, research, science, scientists, spices | Tags: , , , , , ,

  8. Bravery, Foolishness, and Oreos

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    March 1, 2025 by libroshombre

                Betrand Russel once said, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain …
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    Category: archive, botany, libraries, library history, minerals | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

  9. Stupidity, Infinitives, and Phronimos

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    March 1, 2025 by libroshombre

      Rev. Martin Luther King pointed out that “Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and …
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    Category: crime, criminals, government, punctuation, writing, writing badly, writing well | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

  10. Baseball, Xenophobia, and Optimism

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    February 14, 2025 by libroshombre

                The Sage of Baltimore, H.L. Mencken, is largely forgotten these days, but as a magazine journalist writer, editor, and …
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    Category: American English, baseball, language, racism, reference books, word origins, words, xenophobia | Tags: , , , , , , ,

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