Welcome back, all! Last week, we looked at how English falters when describing landscapes that dwarf us—how we reach for “breathtaking” and “majestic” when what we mean is something closer to existential dread. This week, I’ve been thinking about the flip side of that coin: how we describe the small, […]

I was scrolling through travel photography hashtags the other day (procrastination in its finest form), and I kept seeing the same words: breathtaking, stunning, majestic, awe-inspiring. All of them vague, all of them reaching for something they can’t quite touch. We have dozens of precise words for furniture, for car […]

Welcome back, friends! Last week I wrote about how English turns emotional intimacy into a transaction—how we “make” and “build” friendships as if they were products. This week, as we reach the final essay from the May 2025 Paper 2 series, I’ve been thinking about how English handles the opposite […]

Welcome back, friends! Last week I wrote about how English softens the language around labor—how we use euphemisms to look away from difficult work. This week, I’ve been thinking about the opposite linguistic phenomenon: how English makes emotional intimacy sound transactional. We “make” friends the way we “make” dinner or […]

Welcome back, friends! Do you like work? Or do you think that maybe it’s one of those things you’d rather run away from? Well, I guess your attitude about it depends on how you think about it – is it only work when you lift something heavy, or if you […]

“Uncomfortable” is a fascinating word. We use it to describe a scratchy sweater, an awkward silence, a moral compromise, and existential dread. It’s become English’s polite catchall for anything that makes us want to look away, shift our weight, or pretend we didn’t notice. But here’s what fascinates me: unlike […]