I have decided to give Uncle Tom's Cabin another read. A famous quote that surrounds this book, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, in general, is that when she met Abraham Lincoln, he told her So you're the little woman that started this great war! Did Lincoln really say this?

I have always understood the difference between zeugma and syllepsis to be that syllepsis is used to create a semantic dissonance with intentionally humorous effect. For example, here is Ambrose Bierce's definition of the word piano from his The Devil's Dictionary piano n. A parlor utensil fo...

There is a kind of message in espionage that is meant to be intercepted by an adversary for the purpose of spreading false information: For instance, by sending a letter stating that troops are moving north when they're really moving west. As an example, this tactic was used by the British durin...