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Word most looked-up in the dictionary?

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Why 'Dutch courage'?

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To have Dutch courage is to lose fear or inhibition by drinking alcohol.

Was Charles Dickens `'inept and vulgarly sentimental”?

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Charles Dickens was a superb story teller and created memorable characters. But was he a great writer?

What is cognitive dissonance?

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Cognitive dissonance describes the tension caused by having two apparently contradictory thought processes simultaneously - wanting to smoke while knowing smoking is bad for you, for example.  Is it a new term? The phrase was first introduced by Leon Festinger in his 1956 book When Prophecy Fails . He studied the way believers in UFOs dealt with empirical evidence contradicting their deeply held beliefs.  Cognitive dissonance is also associated with the cognitive development theory developed by Jean Piaget - dealing with cognitive dissonance is a key factor in child development. In general English the term is often used when describing how politicians deal with 'inconvenient' data. Examples can be found at all points on the political spectrum. English FAQ Teaching Pack  only £1.99

Where does the term brainstorming come from? Does it work?

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The idea behind brainstorming came in a pioneering  sef help/business book 'Your Creative Power' (1948). It was described as

What is a descriptivist? And a prescriptivist?

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Listen to this short description of two key words in linguistics: descriptivist and prescriptivist .

What is the Oxford comma?

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