Words

Guess how I came to know that April 14-20 marks the 55th National Library Week? Before I give away the answer, you might appreciate that this observance started in the 1950s to combat Americans' growing preference for radios and televisions over books. Over half a century later, libraries are now being threatened by our growing preference for Internet and social media. I had no idea about libraries when I first stepped into one, at the ripe age of 1. My mother tells me that I was excited for story time (though not yet foreseeing my addiction for the books that would come to define my childhood)

As many of the Ravens gather in Owings Mills today for the first voluntary workouts of the offseason, the organization is still awaiting word on its opponent for the Sept. 5 NFL regular-season opener. There was plenty of speculation that the league's regular-season schedule would be released tomorrow. However, that won't be happening, according to NFL spokesman Greg Aiello. "The schedule is not completed and a release date has not been determined," Aiello wrote in an email to The Sun. The schedule is traditionally unveiled before the draft.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a relatively obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar, another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: PURLIEU Originally the land on the fringe or border of a forest, purlieu (pronounced PURL-yoo), has come to mean the outskirts of a city or town, the suburbs or outlying districts of a city or town, the margins or fringes, or a person's usual haunts. Sometimes it can refer to a disreputable part of a city, a slum.

The recent letters to the editor condemning the criticism that prompted Dr. Ben Carson to step down as the commencement speaker at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine graduation miss a critical point ("Hopkins fails test of free speech," April 12). While Dr. Carson has the absolute right to express his opinion, words have consequences. And just as it was Dr. Carson's right to speak his mind or, if he is to be believed, to misspeak it, it is also the right of the university to criticize him and the right of the student body to express their collective desire that he not speak at their graduation.

When Chirag Vani, 27, stepped onto the field for the title match at the American College Cricket national championship last month, he and the rest of the UMBC cricket club were confident. "We had won the Mid-Atlantic Regional last year, so we had momentum going forward," Vani said. "We were confident that we had a very good team this year. It wasn't really a surprise, but everything came together at the right time. " UMBC emerged victorious, defeating South Florida by five wickets in the final in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Vani, who plays wicketkeeper and batsman, hopes the growth of the national championships - from approximately 10 teams in the inaugural tournament in 2009 to 28 this year - helps the sport gain recognition.

In what may be the greatest victory to date for the sophisticatedly asinine organization "No Labels," the Associated Press has embraced a new policy against "labeling people. " For instance, its widely used and influential style guide is being purged of such terms as "schizophrenic" in favor of "diagnosed with schizophrenia. " Most of the chatter about the AP's move has been over its decision to drop the term "illegal immigrant. " AP Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll explained that the change on "illegal immigrant" was based on the no-labeling policy.

Each week The Sun's John McIntyre presents a relatively obscure but evocative word with which you may not be familiar, another brick to add to the wall of your working vocabulary. This week's word: RANNYGAZOO Either you are charmed by P.G.Wodehouse's parallel universe of Edwardian flippancy or you are not, and if you are not, this is the place to step off. Rannygazoo , (pronounced ran-ee-ga-ZOO) it turns out, is not a piece of Edwardian slang, but a solid Americanism from the late nineteenth century that Wodehouse gleefully lifted, as Michael Quinion explored at World Wide Words . It means, Mr. Quinion explains, "a deceptive story or scheme, pranks, tricks or other irritating or foolish carryings-on," the last sense being utterly Wodehousian.

If you are of delicate sensibilities, you do not want to be in the newsroom of a daily newspaper on deadline, because the swearing then and there is heartfelt, vocal, and repetitious.* But journalists have a complicated relationship with bad words, decorum requiring us in text to resort to "the f-word," "the n-word," initial letters with hyphens or dashes or asterisks, "[expletive deleted]," or the vague but ominous "a racial slur. " But journalists' complicated relationship with taboo words mirrors a larger cultural phenomenon, which Melissa Mohr describes thorooughly and thoughtfully in Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing (Oxford University Press, 336 pages, $24.95)

There's a meme going around the Internet that compares “Game of Thrones” with “The Walking Dead.” The zombie show, the meme says, makes you hate its characters before killing them. “Thrones,” however, makes you like them. And that is, I think, objectively true. Even this show's vilest characters (the Lannisters, for instance) all have redeeming qualities. After spending enough time with them, you being to surprise yourself by gravitating toward characters you once reviled.

The word was tristeza. It's a disease of citrus trees, but more importantly, for Tobey Roland, it once scored 228 points for him in a game of Scrabble, he said. Roland, 52, of Mount Washington, loves Scrabble and estimates he has played in 120 tournaments, winning eight to 10, since he started playing competitively in 2005. "It's fun and challenging," said Roland, an independent financial investor. "It's really more about probabilities, using premium spots and letters and getting bonuses by using seven-letter words.