Wordwizard

I'm not much of a grammarian, but here's what I think on this. I would use the singular verb since the subject is "one" and "in a million is just an adjectival addition which describes the "one."
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Ken Greenwald — December 26, 2017

Happy holidays to one and all.
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Ken Greenwald — December 24, 2017

I was not paying attention when I wrote this post, but rather than toss it I will be redundant and add it to the pile: :cry: According to Wikipedia [ Afghan (blanket)] : Defintion : An afghan is a blanket [[or woven rug]] of knitted or crocheted wool, cotton, linen (or many other kinds of natural ma...

Tchotches lives! But no one ever claimed it died. I love this word and couldn't pass up posting the quote I found it in plus a few others for good measure. Susumu Enomoto, a prized Wordwizard from yesteryear, and others did an excellent job of definition and etymology so I won't delve into those. <...

<2017 “If Democrats don’t like these provisions {in the GOP tax bill} . . . they should have negotiated with Republicans in exchange for their votes. Instead, the stubbornly sat this one out and ‘got bupkus. '"> When I was a lad I asked my grandfather (born 1888) and a native Yiddish speaker, what ...

<2017 “It was in this spirit that Anglin ‘ doxed ’ Gersh and her husband, Judah, as well as other Jews in Whitefish, by publishing their contact information and other personal details on his website.”— Atlantic Monthly , December, page 54.> DOX does not appear in Merriam-Webster Online nor in the O...

Hi Tony, Thanks for the compliment and for pointing out that the Devil’s Grandmother is an old phrase in itself. I probably should have thought of searching for that too, but I’m afraid my search skills are a bit rusty. (>:) After further looking, here’s a bit more I found on Devil’s Grandmother : W...

<2007 “We [[physicists, Albert Einstein and Erwin Schrödinger]] have squandered a lot of time on this, and the result looks like a gift from the devil’s grandmother. ”— Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson, page 513> Einstein and Schrödinger had just completed a mammoth effort of once...

Tony, Context certainly does the trick. But in other languages are there such an abundance of words that rely on context? For a purist of some sort they would probably like to have a word's meaning stand on its own and not be dependent on helpers. ______________________________ Ken Greenwald - Decem...

I think most native English speakers have seen lists like this before, but perhaps non-native English speakers have not. What I am wondering is if other languages don't run into the same sorts of problems or is English unique in that it runs into them so much more often. Sorry I can't name the sourc...

John, thanks.
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Ken Greenwald—December 3, 2017

<2017 “The hideous crimes committed by the lunatic president of the U.S. are a blatant challenge to the dignity of the supreme leadership of North Korea,’ state-run North Korea newspaper Rodong Simun said. ‘Those who trample on and make a mockery of North Korea’s dignity can never go scot-free .’”— ...

"Sea Change" sounded familiar and I could have sworn I posted it many moons ago. I searched a list of my postings and sure enough I found that I had posted it back in 2002. So, not that it adds much to the above, I will re-post it here. It must have been wiped out in one of our data transfer glitche...

"We're just making it" is a similar expression.
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Ken Greenwald — July 4, 2017

. <2017 “What a columnist owes his readers isn’t a bid for their constant agreement. It’s independent judgment. Opinion journalism is still journalism, not agitprop .”— New York Times , 30 April> Never heard of it, but it doesn’t sound like a good thing. MERRIAM-WEBSTER ONLINE agitprop : noun and a...