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Word of the Day – Sunday, September 18th

 


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EMEND (ih-MEND)

To correct and revise a text

Common clue: Improve text; Correct copy; Fix, as text; Make changes; Edit; Revise; Better; Blue-pencil; Alter; Correct misspellings, e.g.; Redact; Tinker with the text; Polish prose

Crossword puzzle frequency: 4 times a year

Frequency in English language: 44119 / 86800

News: Rewriting 'Porgy and Bess' – Is the Text of a Classic Ever Sacred?


According to the Compact Oxford English Dictionary “The words emend and amend both derive from Latin emendareto correct’ and have similar, but not identical, meanings in English. Emend means ‘correct and revise (a text)’, while amend means ‘make minor improvements to (a document, rule, or proposal)’.”




Let me be clear that I don't think most mainstream newspapers are any more guilty of bad news reporting than their competitors. Some are downright awful while there are some that are clearly better than others. But their editors emend stories to put a particular slant to them; the editorial writers craft their opinions in specific ways; the regular columnists are selected from a group of voices that suit the desires of the newspaper's editorial board or owners; the news that is selected for printing is news from a very narrow array of the world's events. Reading most daily papers, for example, how many readers would know that there are over 50 armed conflicts occurring in the world even as I type this? Why have most journals not thought to help their readers care?”

[Source: Paul Harris is an Axis of Logic columnist]