Archive for December, 2008





It is not a boner to use effete this way — DFW

The Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus (2nd Ed.) incorporates usage notes from an astonishing group of contributing authors, including Erin McKean, Stephin Merritt, Zadie Smith, Simon Winchester, Francine Prose, and David Foster Wallace. (Eternal disclosure.) Looking for something else last night, I discovered this entertaining note, signed “DFW & EM,” on “effete”: Here’s a word on which some dictionaries and useage . . .

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