Our two-part interview with William Safire about the new edition of his Political Dictionary focused on the lasting contributions of political talk to the English lexicon. But sometimes the language of politics is more idiosyncratic. High-profile politicians who are speaking publicly on a daily basis inevitably develop their own verbal mannerisms, their peculiar linguistic likes and dislikes. Take New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, for instance. We've recently learned that he's a big fan of the word unconscionable, but he's got a problem with the word maintain.  Continue reading...

Last week we presented the first part of our interview with New York Times columnist William Safire about the latest edition of Safire's Political Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 2008), a thoroughgoing guide to the nuances of American political lingo. In part two, Safire explores how the discourse of politics has changed since the previous edition of the dictionary was published in 1993. It's a peculiar terrain full of moonbats and wingnuts, where pork-busters decry the bridge to nowhere.  Continue reading...

William Safire is surely known to Visual Thesaurus readers as the man behind "On Language," the weekly New York Times Magazine column that he has penned continuously since 1979. From 1973 to 2005 he was also a Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist for the Times, taking on the persona of a "vituperative right-wing scandalmonger," in his own self-deprecating terms. But since retiring from the Op/Ed page, his "word maven" persona is now ascendant, particularly with the latest edition of Safire's Political Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 2008), a book that Newsweek has hailed as "the definitive work on the subject."  Continue reading...