In the early 19th Century, a shy British chemist named Luke Howard self-published a pamphlet called Essay on the Modifications of Clouds, which proposed a taxonomy of cloud formations. To his surprise, the pamphlet captured the public imagination...
Susan in Traverse City, Michigan, wonders if there’s a single English word that denotes the relationship between two mothers-in-law, two fathers-in-law, or a mother-in-law and father-in-law. Co-mother seems too vague, and the...
Andrew in Omaha, Nebraska, says his Italian-American grandfather, who grew up in the city’s Little Italy, uses george for something exceptionally good, especially food, and double george for something really great. Slang George goes back to the...
Oh, for cute, oh, for nice, and oh, for dumb are Minnesota expressions built on oh, for plus an adjective, often to pass a quick judgment or exclamation. Jesse in Gainesville, Florida, grew up hearing them in northern Minnesota, especially from...
Gary in Denton, Texas, is looking for a word for the pout that precedes a baby’s wail. The Germans have a word for that: schippchen, which means “little shovel” and refers to the shape of that wet, protruding lower lip. This is...
Ainsley in San Diego heard a coworker say that after some ambitious feedback on a spreadsheet, they’d need to munge the numbers and kludge a solution together. In computing circles, munge means to manipulate data—originally with a whiff of producing...