I missed marking the passing of William Safire, who authored my favorite newspaper column On Language until he became late in 2009 at the age of 79. So let me celebrate his work and how it touched me me, a little bit, now.
Safire inspired my love for language to blossom into good and accurate writing and introduced me to etymology – the topic of his twice weekly New York Times Magazine column for over 30 years. Teen me didn’t know that there was such a thing as etymology. It’s the study of words, and it’s fascinating. Safire’s compelling writing style pulled me right in. Google offers this definition: