By Kristen Di Gennaro A reader sent me an email a while back sharing his language pet peeve about “the improper use of the verb ‘bite,’ ” or more specifically, when people use “bit” for the past participle as in, “I got bit by a dog.” In Standard American English, the past participle for “bite” is “bitten,” so the sentence would be “I got bitten by a dog.” The past participle is the form we use in passive sentences, where the subject of the sentence (in this case, I) is not t

Discussing his latest book, Unabridged: The Thrill of and Threat to the Modern Dictionary , Stefan Fatsis notes, “I still have the Webster’s New World dictionary my mom gifted me on my 11th birthday.” As the holiday season approaches and we shop for gifts, I wonder when and why we started “gifting” and stopped merely “giving” presents to others. I first noticed people regularly using “to gift” as a verb 15 or so years ago. It’s a good example of what linguists call “conversio

A whole entire response to redundancies I n response to my last column describing the new(ish) use of the possessive “and I’s,” a reader...