Monday, March 27, 2006

Column roundup

You can be a rock star in politics without being Bono. William Safire explains the phenomenon in his "On Language" column. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama, Alan Greenspan -- they've all achieved rock star status.

In "The Word" column at the Boston Globe, Jan Freeman discusses figurative and literal uses of literally. When literal definitions shift, so can figurative ones. Are soldiers literally peppered with shrapnel? Can a piece of paper literally fly through the air?

And, despite the uninviting display type, this story on the evolution of hot had some interesting tidbits. Find out how "He was hot for Miss Kitty" became "Miss Kitty is hot."

2 Comments:

At 12:18 AM, March 29, 2006, Blogger Nicole said...

And now The Smoking Gun is calling Dick Cheney a rock star. Love it!

 
At 11:47 PM, March 29, 2006, Blogger Nicole said...

More rock star fun:

In a story on indie yuppies redefining adulthood is this sentence: "The dot-com bubble burst, but the aesthetic remained, as part of the ongoing rock star–ification of America."

I'd probably go with two hyphens, rock-star-ification. But, still, I like it.

 

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