Words, Stories and Sacred Texts--those three words or ideas capture the purposes of this site. On this site, Dr Long provides the longest list of useful English words on the Internet, along with scholarly or historical definitions of hundreds of them. He comments at length on influential or classic texts from a number of traditions around the world.

Since completing his Ph D in the History of Religions: Early Christianity (Brown, 1982)  Dr Long has been a professor of religion and humanities, history and government, and a pastor. He also has a law degree, been a litigation attorney, law professor and legal consultant. He is an award-winning (read more. . .)

Bill's Recent Books

Welcome to my web site. Clicking on the books above will lead you to excerpts from the books as well as purchase information. Clicking on the topics in the header above will take you to a more detailed presentation of each of those categories. I hope you would consider supporting this page. A click on the Donate button at the top will enable that. As of 3/19/2020, this page is still under construction. 

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From 2004-2011 I was an active participant in what I call the  "Senior Spelling Movement,"  placing second twice and third once in the national bees. Here is a video of a story done about me in 2011 by the CBS Evening News.

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RECENTLY POSTED ESSAYS

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My May 13 essay entitled "Diary in a Time of National Emergency," is here.

On April 9, I finished posting the eighteen chapters of my 2010 book Word Wealth:  300 Words for Pleasure and Profit. 

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On March 25, I published an essay entitled "Hi, I 'm Bill, and I'm a Semi-Christian." It is a reflection on how we might define Christian in the modern world.

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On March 29, I published an essay entitled "From 'Black and White' to 'Spectrum' Thinking: The Thought Revolution of the Twenty-first Century."

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On March 25, I began publishing my 2010 book Word Wealth: 300 Words for Pleasure and Profit. Essays begin here.

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On March 19, I published my Shorter Word List (3000 words), words that can be used either by those in spelling bees, by those for whom English is not your native language but you would like to deepen your understanding of English, or by native English speakers who would like to hone their knowledge. The list is pitched at an advanced high school/advanced college level.

In March 2020, I posted ten essays on the seminal US Supreme Court case Marbury v Madison (1803). The essays not only go through the judicial reasoning in that an the companion case of Stuart v Laird, but give a rich historical background to these decision. I wrote these originally in Fall 2007 and edited them in 2020. Essays are here.

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Also beginning March 10, 2020, I am posting scholarly definitions about five days a week of a number of words which are on my larger (nearly 32,000) and shorter (3000) word lists. These definitions are usually from about 150-300 words each. To date (March 25, 2020) I have published about 110 definitions. Recent additions include abacus, abatement, abattoir, aberration, abstemious, abracadabra, abscess, abutment, abysmally, acetaminophen, acre, acquiesce, acromegaly adventitious  aerie, aerodynamics, affectation  affenpinscher, agammaglobulinemia, ageism, agglutinative, agoraphobia, aggiornamento, ailurophobia, alacrity, albumen/albumin, aleatory, algebraic, alienation, aliphatic, aliquot, allay, allemande, allotment, altricial, Alzheimer's, amaurosis, ambulatory, Amerindian, amniocentesis, amoxicillin, amphetamine, amygdala, amyotrophic, anachronistic anaphora, androgynous, angelology, anime, ankh, ankylosaurus, annihilate, anodyne.  You may read them and others here.  A longer and more humorous essay on allargando and Italian-derived musical terms for "slow down" is here.

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On March 13, 2020 I finished posting seven essays (total length exceeds 20,000 words) from a long study I did in 2008 on Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. I wrote its a guide for lawyers and judges. Those essays are here.

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On March 8, 2020, I posted essays on my junior high experience in Darien CT, written originally in 2006.  You can find those essays here. My memories of specific people are here.  My March 18 essay on leaving Darien is here. 

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Beginning on February 29, 2020, I posted more than 40 my 2010 essays (about 50,000 words) on Book I of Homer's Iliad.   I also posted my 2009 essays (about 70,000 words) on Milton's Paradise Lost.

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