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Showing posts from February 2, 2011

The Most Misused Word in CBA

I don't know who started it, but I keep seeing this work in novels published for CBA that is driving me crazy. It is a phrase as much as anything and it seems to appear in the first chapter quite frequently. At first, I thought it was a suspense novelist thing. I saw Brandilyn Collins use it and then I saw it in a Love Inspired Suspense book, which made me wonder if that author had copied it from Brandilyn Collins. But it also appears in Lonestar Sanctuary by Colleen Coble. "Rick watched the feeble horse try to feed, and he fisted his hands. (Emphasis mine) I'll tell you what. If I see this phrase many more times, you won't find me fisting my hands, you'll find me fisting a podium. Given the context of the sentence around it, I think what these writers actually intend to say with this phrase is that he clenched his fists. Granted, a secondary mean of the verb fist, according to Merriam-Webster online is to clench into a fist, but the primary meaning is grip wit...