Descriptive words: a rant.

Words are tricky things. It's bad enough when things are written down (predictive text, eh?) but when spoken aloud then accents, speed, technical terms, dialect, and speaking-with-the-head-stuck-a-cupboard or through-a-gobstopper all make understanding each other difficult - and sometimes perilous.

But sometimes, just sometimes, you'd think things would be straightforward.

I was in a pasty shop in Dorset the other day (a pasty, for the non-British, is a single-portion semi-circular pie, usually savory:


photo by David Johnson) [1]

and I heard the shop assistant ask the Englishman beside me, who was making his order, small or large?

And the man replied what's the difference?

Word To Use Today: large. See if you can find an English-speaker who doesn't understand what large means. The word comes from the Latin largus, which means ample or abundant.