Tuesday, May 24, 2022
Thursday, May 19, 2022
Underused Words
Axios - "Underused words for your repertoire"
Some 75% of our daily speaking comes from just 800 words, BBC estimates.
The big picture: We all fall into language patterns and ruts, so we asked Axios' staff to give us their favorite cool, underused words to lengthen our vocabulary lists.
Here are some fun ones worth elevating — and their Merriam-Webster definitions:
- Apricity: the warmth of the sun in the winter
- Protean: "displaying great diversity or variety," like an actor who can do both comedy and tragedy
- Doyen: a person considered to be uniquely skilled and experienced in a certain field
- Petrichor: the pleasant smell of the earth after a rainstorm following a long dry period
- Spindrift: sea spray
- Susurrus: a whispering or rustling sound (it sounds like what it means!)
- Avuncular: "suggestive of an uncle especially in kindliness or geniality"
- Frabjous: wonderful, extraordinary, joyous (Fun fact: Axios chief financial correspondent Felix Salmon used frabjous in a story once.)
The bottom line: We can always expand our vocabularies to communicate our ideas with more precision — or just find new words that make us smile.
Motorcycle Chariots
Chariot racing is cool, but imagine if you replaced the horses with motorcycles. Okay, now stop imagining...
— Kendall Baker (@kendallbaker) May 17, 2022
It exists. pic.twitter.com/VJb5UhtucK
The Battle of Alberta
From Axios Sports:
Why it matters: This is the sixth postseason matchup ever — and first since 1991 — between two cities roughly the same distance apart as Boston and New York.
- 1991: Oilers won 4-3 (first round)
- 1988: Oilers won 4-0 (second)
- 1986: Flames won 4-3 (second)
- 1984: Oilers won 4-3 (second)
- 1983: Oilers won 4-1 (second)
Context: Alberta is the fourth-most populous of Canada's 10 provinces (~4.5 million people). More than half of Albertans live in either Edmonton, which is the capital, or Calgary, which is the province's largest city.
The backdrop: The Edmonton-Calgary hockey rivalry dates back to the 1890s and both cities had teams in the short-lived Western Canada Hockey League in the 1920s.
- The rivalry found new life when teams from both cities joined the NHL in the 1970s and took the league by storm. Every year from 1983 to 1990, one of the two made the Stanley Cup Final.
- While Edmonton holds the edge in the playoffs (20-10), Calgary leads the regular-season series (130-111-19). They've fought 265 times in their 290 games — evidence of bad blood.
The big picture: Not only is this the first Battle of Alberta in 31 years — it's also just the fifth all-Canadian playoff series this century (not counting 2021's COVID format). The other four were all Maple Leafs-Senators in the early 2000s.
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