Words, coffee, and urban planning: Eli Burnstein on the Dictionary of Fine Distinctions

Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing

Mignon Fogarty, Inc.

Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 9 May 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

984. This week, we talk about the subtle differences between words such as "stock" and "broth," "street" and "boulevard," "maze" and "labyrinth" and more with Eli Burnstein, author of "The Dictionary of Fine Distinctions." Confusion about colors got him started on this path, but along the way, he gained insights into language, culture, and the subtle differences that shape meanings.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Grammar Girl here, it's Mignon Fog Fog, and today I have an interview with Eli Bernstein,
0:10.8	author of The Dictionary of Fine Distinctions, that looks at words with close meanings,
0:15.4	like, what is the actual difference between a street, an avenue, and a drive, stock, and broth,
0:22.4	a maze in a labyrinth.
0:24.0	His work has been featured in the New Yorker, McSweeny's, and more.
0:31.0	Eli, thank you so much for being here.
0:35.0	Oh, my pleasure.
0:35.6	Thanks for having me.
0:37.2	You bet.
0:37.8	So, you know, the thing that surprised me most
0:40.5	about your book as I was reading it is that there was so much in it that I didn't know.
0:46.2	You know, I would think that a book about words, I would know those things, but I didn't.
0:50.8	So why don't you give people sort of the big picture of what the book is
0:54.8	about and what inspired you to write it? Sure well first let me say that makes two of us
1:01.2	in terms of distinctions I didn't know before going in which was
1:04.3	what made the project such a treat it allowed me to teach myself a lot. As for why I
1:10.5	wrote the book well first let me say what the book is about. So it's called
1:15.2	Dictionary Fine Distinctions as the title suggests. It's a collection of objects, ideas,
1:21.1	words, natural phenomena that are commonly confused or that we didn't even
1:26.2	know there was a difference between in the first place.
1:28.8	So nuances, subtleties, things like that.
1:32.1	As for how I came to write the book,
	...

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