'The Elongated Yellow Fruit': On diction

Do you nictitate, or do you blink? Were the Clampetts new-money, or would you call them parvenus or arrivistes? When it comes to word choice, English draws the battle lines across a few fronts: the plainspoken versus the purple, the Saxonic versus the Latinate, Hemingway versus Nabokov. So let's get into it.

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Thing 1: Ryan Davis

Thing 2: Mike Laws

Producer: Amanda Darrach

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Show notes:
Protest Periphrasis: How the words used to describe the actions of police hide their violence, Mike Laws, CJR