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 […]

Welcome back, friends! Last week I wrote about how we’ve inflated the word “extraordinary” until it means almost nothing. This week, I’ve been thinking about the opposite problem: words that have become too small, too casual, to carry the weight we actually need them to hold. Take “switch.” We use […]

Welcome back, friends! We call everything extraordinary now—a sandwich, a sunset, a Tuesday afternoon. The word comes from Latin: extra ordinem, “outside the usual order.” It was meant to describe things that break the pattern, that violate what we expect from the world. But we’ve inflated it until it’s lost […]