“I just don’t think it will be grabby enough for [X magazine],” a journalist explained candidly in his response to one of my pitches yesterday. I had never heard, until then, the adjective “grabby” with that meaning — of arousing interest or attention. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever heard or read the word grabby in any context. I knew exactly what he meant when he consigned my pitch to the ungrabby bin, and it’s certainly not the first time one of my suggestions has been deemed ungrabby — even if they’ve never been labeled as such. But it did make me wonder about the history and pervasiveness of this curious colloquialism, which is quite grabby in its own right … Continue reading →