Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 11/08/2026SURPRISED: by the lightweight verb in this morning’s Boston Globe headline: BC professor frets over AI bubble NOT SURPRISED: to discover that the law professor in question is a woman. 030
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 10/08/2026Kind of depends on how you define “answering to,” doesn’t it? 000
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 26/07/2026A message from NYT Wirecutter offered "Ideas for a screen-free summer" and I seriously thought it was about alternative ways to repel bugs. Oh. You mean this kind of screen. 000
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 03/10/2025Not to be a killjoy, but isn't that what we all learned to call "first person plural" in our school days? 220
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 24/08/2025Wow, actual stick stamps! But the article was referring to the marks on the floor, not the implement that made them. 010
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 24/08/2025Oops I mean “stick stamps,” which sounds even less plausible 100
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 24/08/2025But have you ever heard them called sticker stamps? I haven’t, here in Boston. 000
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 09/08/2025Yes, some Americans say ROOT and some say ROWT (for highways) and it’s impossible to tell which commenters know this and which have no idea 110
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 09/08/2025Just looking at the photo makes my knees go watery… 000
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 08/08/2025Had a similar thought when I noticed the subtitles for “Outrageous,” in which Hitler is a major player, consistently spelled the salute “Seig Heil.” 110
Reposted by Jan FreemanJustin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 01/08/2025Folks who won't be fooled by politicized official economic statistics: - The Fed - The bond market - The stock market - Foreign investors Folks who will be flying blind in the absence of reliable econ data: - All of the above - Small biz - Big biz - Voters 581057370
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 12/07/2025If you want the rest of the DARE volumes, I can let you have them for whatever they cost to ship. (Trying so hard to start deaccessioning. Did you know that the older you get, the heavier your books are?) 110
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 12/07/2025I too thought that was the problem with "the hoi polloi." 🤔 010
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 30/06/2025Oh it totally is, and one with an unusual history. www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/snuc...merriam-webster.com'Sneaked' or 'Snuck': Which is correct?It's a Modern English Mystery 130
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 30/06/2025Watching "Outrageous," about the Mitfords and Mosley, and the characters have uttered (versions of) "Want to come with?" 4 times in 3 episodes. Seriously doubt the Mitfords and their set ever used that locution, but willing to hear otherwise from Brits & linguists. (Does BrE do it even today?) 000
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 29/06/2025Those were generally called "garter belts" where I was. A girdle could have straps for attaching stockings, but was definitely meant to constrict (mainly) the hips/butt. 020
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 29/06/2025I hope we are all enjoying Justin Wolfers, one of my favorite economists (I know a few), who for some reason is allowed to say true things on TV. Watch him use the word "lying" three times about government debt claims. 010
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 29/06/2025This drove me nuts when "Moulin Rouge" was a current movie. I don't think I ever once heard the correct vowel at the end of "Moulin." (Not really qualified to nitpick in French, but this one really stood out.) 010
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 29/06/2025I am old enough to have worn an actual girdle (for a brief historical moment before we said goodbye to all that), and shapeware is definitely not a synonym for girdle. Though, granted, “girdle“ is an old word for many kinds of garments. 050
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 26/06/2025I would guess many of your readers have heard this word in “Some Like It Hot.” 000
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 25/06/2025Good call. I've spent the heat wave rereading "Parade's End," or rather mostly listening to an excellent audio version while occasionally consulting my shabby 1979 Vintage paperback. 010
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 25/06/2025OH has loosened up a lot, but in my formative years you bought liquor at the state store from a guy at a single little window. 010
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 25/06/2025Moved to CA from OH, can still picture the stunning sight of a shopping cart full of discount vodka bottles first time I walked into the Safeway. 110
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 09/06/2025The OED's subscription notice tells me: "If you'd not want to renew it you can untick the 'Auto renew' option." Would love comment from BrE speakers — the cites I've found use "you'd not" to mean "you hadn't" or "you didn't," neither of which fits here. @lynneguist.bsky.social 330
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 09/06/2025I share your love of the newels and risers, but one caution: if you’re old enough to declare that this is your last house, you are definitely old enough for the rule that you never go up or down without a hand on the banister. I realize that can’t apply to moving day, but it’s a life-saving habit. 220
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 07/06/2025Also the audio versions with Patrick Tull narrating are amazing. I loved them despite having no special interest in either seafaring or the Napoleonic wars. 150
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 02/06/2025That’s not just for contronyms like “nonplussed,” now taken to mean its opposite, but also means usages that are popular but disapproved of by segments of the population. 010
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 02/06/2025Bryan Garner, author of the big usage books of our era, calls them “skunked terms.” 110
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 02/06/2025And then there's "collop" as well ... or rather, there it isn't. 010
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 02/06/2025I tried it and was not thinking of it as BrE, but who knows? It might be a word I learned in childhood from Winnie-the-Pooh. 110
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 30/05/2025Just re-read this — it's on the weird side for Sayers (the dream part), and the Wimsey involvement is too little, too late. But short and entertaining enough! 010
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 28/05/2025It was worse because it was on my phone, where the x's that close ads are so tiny you can barely see them. So I gave up and waited for the clarity of daylight and the laptop screen! 000
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 28/05/2025Now I see, the "#2 and #3" skeet refers to your previous skeet describing those examples, not to anything about the answers. (I couldn't read the explanations last night because I kept getting whisked off to ad sites, but I did correctly ID the passives, as an editor should.) 100
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 28/05/2025Yes, I think lots of people (especially those who, like me, would never have watched "The Apprentice") underestimate the effect of having him play the role of "successful boss" on TV for years. 020
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 24/05/2025And they won’t correct the information until Thursday or Friday. 010
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 22/05/2025Amused that your phone wrote “homophones” Instead of the near-homophone you must have intended… 110
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 22/05/2025This is what milkshakes were invented for, but of course you could always make a healthy version if you aren’t feeling very sorry for yourself… 020
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 21/05/2025This was me when my husband tried reading me Proust at bedtime. 010
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 20/05/2025I researched a lot of old usage books for my commentary on Bierce’s “Write It Right,” and I never saw this so-called rule. Guessing it’s the 20th-century invention of some sensitive schoolteacher. 010
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 19/05/2025But… I am a right-handed person and I hold my phone in my left hand because I’m using my right hand to do whatever I’m doing on the phone (other than talking, of course). So are you doing everything on the screen with your non-dominant hand? 100
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 16/05/2025I heard the name from grandchildren before I saw the show and for the longest time I thought it was called Papa Troll. 160
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 15/05/2025Write It Right itself is online, but I'd love to send you a copy of the centenary edition I did in 2009, called Write It Right: The Celebrated Cynic's Language Peeves Deciphered, Appraised, and Annotated for 21st-Century Readers." (IOW I explain the history of his rules, when possible.) DM me? 140
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 15/05/2025Hi Mignon — Bierce is more famous for DD, but he also wrote an actual usage guide, called Write It Right. The advice is pretty standard for the era, but there's plenty of fun, thanks to Bierce's wit and weirdness. (Don't call a building "dilapidated" unless it's made of stone, b/c "lapis"=stone.)1/2 140
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 03/05/2025For me the magic is in the refills. I trace this fondness back to the post-dental appointment milkshakes of childhood, when they gave you a small glass along with the apparently bottomless metal blender container. 120
Reposted by Jan FreemanBoston Tom Levenson @tomlevenson.bsky.social · 29/04/2025Trump is channeling King Cnut without the slightest grasp of the point the Danish monarch was trying to make. 292
Jan Freeman @janfreeman.bsky.social · 24/04/2025Dear ad copywriters, if it's the "first" guide of its kind then it's meaningless to call it the "most trustworthy," right? 010