What's happening to the New York Times? They promoted one of their food articles today with the sentence, "Turn your stuffing into muffins for a festive flare to the popular side dish."
Leaving aside the fact that muffins made out of stuffing are not muffins in my book, presumably the writer meant flair, not flare.
The Oxford dictionaries site says:
Flair means 'a natural ability or talent', as in:
She had a flair for languages.
Or 'a smartness of style or manner',
whereas flare means 'burn suddenly' or 'become wider', as in:
The flare of the match lit up his face.
There was a slight flare at the ends of his trouser
The dictionary gives dash, panache, verve, oomph and pizazz (sometimes spelled pizzazz) as synonyms for flair, although I have trouble imagining stuffing muffins as having any of those characteristics.
Within the article they quote a food blogger: "“Last year at Thanksgiving I made this recipe completely vegan and gluten-free and my family (who is normally very wary of anything made without meat or dairy) completely ate it up.”
Later in the article they quote the blogger again and use her quote in a call-out as well: "...this recipe is so fun that it takes center stage."
I've given up expecting proper grammar from the likes of USA Today and most online outlets, but I expect the New York Times copy editors to be fuddy-duddies like me where language is concerned.
