The Literary Genius of Abraham Lincoln
In a few days, our nation will celebrate the sesquicentennial of the Gettysburg Address, which Abraham Lincoln delivered on Nov. 19, 1863. In Tuesday’s U-T, you’ll find my homage to that most...
View ArticleLincoln’s Words Long Remembered
On July 1 through July 3, 1863, at the Battle of Gettysburg, Pa., Americans slew Americans in the most lethal battle ever fought on United States soil. In that most pivotal clash of the Civil War,...
View ArticleUnprecedented Procession of Presidential Anagrams
Riddler Reacher at your service. That’s an anagramof my real identity, Richard Lederer, a reshuffling of all the letters in my first and last name. What’s in a president’s name? Plenty, when you start...
View ArticleHow Politicians Sling Muddle and Get Away With It
Politicians have been riddled by riddles: What’s a politician? A man who will double-cross that bridge when he comes to it. How can you tell when a politician is lying? His lips are moving. What do...
View ArticleWhat’s In A President’s Name? More Than You Think
Ulysses S. Grant, our 18th president, came into this world as Hiram Ulysses Grant. When his name was mistakenly entered on the West Point register as Ulysses Simpson Grant, he eagerly embraced the...
View ArticleNow is the Perfect Time to Laugh at Political Tickles
In this year of electile dysfunction, with just a few days left before the race for the presidency crosses the finish line, political jokes can be very powerful. That’s why so many of them get elected....
View ArticleInauguration Speeches are Omens of Things to Come
This coming Friday, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as America’s 45th president. The story behind the word inaugurate is an intriguing one. It literally means “to take omens from the flight of birds.”...
View ArticleDiagramming Sentences May Be Making A Comeback
A number of readers of this wordstruck column remember, from back in those school days, school days, dear old golden rule days, the challenges and joys of diagramming sentences. Those solid and dotted...
View ArticleUnlocking the Power of JFK’s Stylish Inaugural Address
May 29, two days from now, marks the centennial of the birth in Brookline, Mass., of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, our 35th president, at 43 and 7 month the youngest ever to be elected to that position....
View ArticleThere are So Many Ways to Say, ‘You’re Fired!’
Nobody gets fired anymore. Nowadays, when people lose their jobs, they are “reclassified,” “rightsized,” “deselected,” “outplaced,” “nonpositively terminated” or any other of dozens of euphemistic...
View ArticleA Select Shelf of Books by Our Writerly Presidents
Ulysses S. Grant claimed to smoke 7 to 10 cigars a day. When word got out of the president’s love of stogies, people sent him more than ten thousand boxes of cigars. Grant finished his 200,000- word...
View ArticleWords, Words, Words About Our Wordy Presidents
One of the best known of American poems begins: O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done; The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won. In this poem by Walt Whitman, the captain...
View ArticleA Timely Example of How Words Wander Wondrously
About two weeks ago, at the age of 101, Katherine Johnson slipped the surly bonds of earth. She was a brilliant African American mathematician who calculated rocket trajectories and earth orbits for...
View ArticleA 4th of July Commemoration of Presidential Words
In the 1830s, in New England, there was a craze for initialisms, in the manner of FYI, PDQ, OMG and TGIF, so popular today. The fad went so far as to generate letter combinations of intentionally...
View ArticleHere’s a classical primer of political word origins
We Americans are caught in the grip of a feverish, frenetic, fervent, frantic and frenzied presidential campaign that demonstrates why in England people stand for election, but in the United States...
View Article10 tricky presidential bar bets for Presidents Day
We’ll celebrate Presidents (not President’s) Day on Monday, February 15. A number of studies indicate that History and Civics are the subjects in which American students fare worst. Here’s your...
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