I’m a little fussy about past participles. Unjustifiably fussy. It may have to do with the fact that I married someone from small-town Massachusetts, where everything is “I have ate this” and “I ...

Last week we talked about how to look up past participles in your dictionary. Here's a condensed lesson: For any irregular verb, the past tense and past participle are listed right after the entry ...

The dictionary is gaslighting me. I know I sound crazy, but that’s just proof of gaslighting, right? Let me explain. For years I’ve been telling people that they never have to agonize over whether to ...

To talk about something you did in the past, you're going to need the perfect ‎‎ tense. The perfect tense is made up of two parts. The first part is often the verb avoir ‎- ‎to have and the second ...

I want to follow up on the topic of language evolution that I took up in my previous newsletter about how the word “satisfying” has taken on a new meaning among many of today’s kids. The bigger theme ...

A RECENT ARTICLE in The Economist on Germany’s coalition talks was given the headline “Green-lit”. Elsewhere, though, we have reported that ventures were “greenlighted”. Another new verb is subject to ...