Grammar Girl here.
Today's topic is the word xeriscape.
This is kind of a self-indulgent podcast for me. I've been house hunting lately, and I swear if one more real estate agent tells me about a property's wonderful zeroscape, I'm going to rent for the rest of my life.
The word is xeriscape. X-E-R-I-S-C-A-P-E. It comes from a combination of the word xeric, which means "having scant moisture," and the word scape, which in this case refers to a type of land. So a xeriscape is a type of landscape where the plants don't require a lot of water, and it usually doesn't require much other maintenance either. That makes it a wonderful thing in my book, and I can see why people get confused and think the word is zeroscape, because it requires zero maintenance, but according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word was coined by the Denver Water Department in 1981, and the word is xeriscape.
The root xeric in xeriscape come from the Greek prefix xer-, which means "dry." There aren't many English words that use the xer- prefix. Xeroderma is dry skin, xerography is a type of dry printing, xerophagy is eating dry food, and besides xeriscape there are just a few others.
Vote for Your City
It's a short episode this week, so I'd like you to take a second to vote on something. We're just starting to plan the Grammar Girl summer tour to promote my print book that is coming out in July, and I'd like to hear from you what cities you want me to visit. The coordinators have given me a list of 25 cities to choose from that I'll list on the website, and I've set up a special e-mail address for the voting.
Please look at the city list at the Grammar Girl section of QuickAndDirtyTips.com, and then send an e-mail with the city of your choice in the subject line. The e-mail address is。。。 So here's how you do it: you go to the website, pick your city, and then if it is Seattle, for example, send an e-mail message with the subject line "Seattle" to。。。You can vote until March 1. And then sometime in early March I'll let you know what cities I'll be visiting this summer! I can't wait to meet a lot of you in person!
That's all. Thanks for listening.
