Sublime

For example, the title page for a 1672 reprint of a book called The Famous Game of Chesse-play shows two nattily dressed bearded men at the board and guarantees that readers will learn ‘more by reading of this small Book, than by playing of a thousand Mates. Now augmented in many material things formerly wanting.’

Even the lightest, whitest of manchet breads is heavier, nuttier, denser and more filling than most of us are used to, and the commoner maslin and dredge breads are solid indeed by modern standards. They all require plenty of chewing, especially the darker breads. The crusts of the breads are thick and crunchy, sharply different from the softer cru

An even more extreme example comes in how English speakers smooth out “I do not know.” We’ve been saying it out loud for generations, long enough for it to have worn down to “I don’t know,” “I dunno,” and even a simple triplet “uh-huh-uh” or “mm-hm-mm” to the low-high-low melody of “I dunno.” “I dunno” is easier to articulate than “I do not know,”

‘The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.’

Some words are identical across different groups, but mean vastly different things: a bird’s ‘jizz’ is most certainly not the same as the one a chef slathers all over his chicken cacciatore.

'Dodson and Fogg,' he repeated mechanically. 'Bardell and Pickwick,' said Mr. Snodgrass, musing.

In the US army, ‘meat-eaters’ are the Special Forces soldiers whose mission depends on violence rather than the establishing of peace;

Clement Wood’s rhyming dictionary.