Category Archives: Uncategorized

In the gangster drama The Outfit (2022), the sublime Mark Rylance plays Leonard Burling, an English cutter (not tailor, please, “Anyone with a needle and thread and fifteen minutes can be a tailor”) who practices his craft in Chicago in … Continue reading →

In late November of the Year of Our Lord 1462 the thirty-one-year-old François Villon, France’s original poète maudit, or accursed poet, is arrested and locked up in Paris’s Grand Châtelet. He has already tasted the dures crostes (hard crusts) and … Continue reading →

How do we know where a word exists in a language vis-à-vis all the other words of the language? By that I mean, is the word high or low, formal, informal, or somewhere in between, dressed in a suit and … Continue reading →