This week’s theme
Toponyms

This week’s words
solecism
Manchurian candidate
Dunkirk
Siberia
ultima Thule


Previous week’s theme
Words originating in the moon

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A.Word.A.Day

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion, too

Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
[Check out this rendition; 8 min., but totally worth it]

PRONUNCIATION:

(SOL-i-siz-ehm, SO-li-)

MEANING:

noun:
1. A grammatical mistake or a nonstandard usage.
2. A breach of etiquette.
3. An error, inconsistency, or impropriety.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Latin soloecismus, from Greek soloikismos, from soloikos (speaking incorrectly; literally, inhabitant of Soloi) after Soloi, an ancient Athenian colony in Cilicia where a dialect considered as substandard was spoken. Earliest documented use: 1577.

USAGE:

“Purists who carp about grammatical solecisms such as ‘try and find’ instead of ‘try to find’ should refer to a 2007 study which found that Brits use ‘try and’ 71 per cent of the time in speech and 24 per cent in writing, compared with Americans who used it only 24 per cent of the time in speech and 5 per cent in writing.”
Michael Skapinker; The Language of Shakespeare: American English is Truer to Tradition Than the British Like to Think; Financial Times (London, UK); Mar 24, 2018.

See more usage examples of solecism in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: