Opinion

Remember faces? We used to be able to see people’s noses, mouths, chins and — sometimes — glorious mustaches. In order to help stop the spread of COVID-19, we wear face coverings in everyday places including grocery stores, schools and post offices. All we can see of each other’s faces is our eyes. That’s where Tyra Banks comes in.

I remember, a long time ago, when I used to have a social life. My husband, Peter, and I have been visiting his sister, Lori, once a week while she battles cancer.

I hope that headline grabbed your attention. As much as I’d love to see a reunion tour of Justin Timberlake and the other guys, the closest thing to an N*SYNC lyric you’re going to get today is in this article. It might sound crazy, but it isn’t a lie; today we’re reviewing the words “buy,” “bye” and “by.”

Ilove reader feedback, especially when it is glowing. Luann wrote in with a great question.

I am not exactly a connoisseur of contemporary culture. I haven’t seen the latest series on Netflix or anything else. I don’t follow Twitter or Snapchat or Instagram. But somehow, a TikTok phenomenon came to my attention that I found too delightful to ignore.

I‘ve always loved librarians. I remember my first school librarian.

I‘m going to lean on my three years of high school Latin to answer this question. I really wanted to make sure I was profiled as a giant nerd during my formative teen years, so I took a class where we got extra credit for wearing a homemade toga to school for an entire day. Let’s just say I got my extra credit.

My husband, Peter, is taking no chances. I knew this about him before I married him.

I have a new favorite word and, no, it’s not “hygge.” Similar to “hygge,” though, this word looks like you dropped a random handful of Scrabble letters onto the gameboard in an attempt to convince your friend that it’s a real word. My new favorite word is “phrop.” Coined by Sir Arnold Lunn in the late 1940s, “phrop” was Lunn’s entry in a made-up word competition in “The New Statesman,” according to Philip Howard in his 1984 book “The State of Language.” It seems Sir Arnold created the word “phrop” as a combination of the words “phrase” and “opposite.” When you break down this idea, you get a phrase that means the opposite of what it actually means.