Coming to Terms

When William Safire delineates the difference between misinformation and disinformation or “distances himself” from clichés, people sit up and take notice. Which is not to say that Safire’s readers always take the punning pundit at his word: they don’t, and he’s got the letters to prove it.

Among the entries in Coming to Terms, this all-new collection of Safire’s “On Language” columns, you’ll read the repartee of Lexicographic Irregulars great and small. John Haim of New York sets in concr...