Tuesday, October 17, 2017

Vocabulary Expansion Words: New Edition of “Words of the Month”

Have you checked out the latest edition (September/ October 2017) of Words of the Month,” my free vocabulary enrichment feature? Here are the six featured words, all of which lie within the conversational vocabulary of America’s most articulate (as is the case with all of the words featured in my book, TheArticulate Professional-3rd Edition”):

1. truculent
2. flaccid
3. supplicant
4. certitude
5. discomfit
6. august

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

“If the Supreme Court’s Last Term Looked Like a Desert, This New Term Already Looks Like a Tropical Rainforest”; “The Natural Regenerative Juices of Capitalism”—Use of Visual, Evocative Expression to Emphasize One’s Point

Here are some examples of highly effective communicators using a vivid, evocative expression while emphasizing something and thus making their assertion indelible--examples which, I hope, will inspire the rest of us into similarly imaginative analogies, especially when we are trying to break through the clutter. 

  • A couple of days ago, while discussing the U.S. Supreme Court’s upcoming new term on NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday,” Nina Totenberg saying: “If last year’s Supreme Court term was so dry of interesting cases that it looked like a desert, this term, which opens Monday, already looks like a tropical rainforest. And the justices are only halfway to filling up their docket.” [Totenberg then went on to mention some of the numerous controversial cases that lie ahead, such as partisan gerrymandering, privacy in an age of technology, the right of a same-sex couple to buy a specially created wedding cake versus a bakery’s right to refuse the order...] 
 
  • [From my 2011 archives.] Warren Buffet telling Susie Gharib of PBS’s “Nightly Business Report”: “By far the most important factor in coming out of any recession is what I call ‘the natural regenerative juices of capitalism’--people like millions of Americans trying to think of some way to do better for their families and do better for their customers. It’s always worked and will continue to work.”
© Copyright 2017  V. J. Singal