In 2006, the International Astronomical Union kicked Pluto off its planetary pedestal. In his delightful book How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming (Bookshop|Amazon) astronomer Mike Brown recounts the events leading up to the demotion of that celestial body and the controversy over the definition of the word planet. The resulting change in nomenclature was such big news worldwide that, in a run-off against the term climate canary, the American Dialect Society voted the neologism plutoed its 2006 “Word of the Year.” The word planet derives from the Greek word planētēs (πλανήτης) which means “wanderer.” This is part of a complete episode.
A member of the ski patrol at Vermont’s Sugarbush Resort shares some workplace slang. Boilerplate denotes hard-packed snow with a ruffled pattern that makes skis chatter, death cookies are random chunks that could cause an accident, and...
A resident of Michigan’s scenic Beaver Island shares the term, boodling, which the locals use to denote the social activity of leisurely wandering the island, often with cold fermented beverages. There have been various proposed etymologies...
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