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.
If you start the phrase when in Rome… but don’t finish the sentence with do as the Romans do, or say birds of a feather… without adding flock together, you’re engaging in anapodoton, a term of rhetoric that refers to the...
There are many proposed origins for the exclamation of surprise, holy Toledo! But the most likely one involves not the city in Ohio, but instead Toledo, Spain, which has been a major religious center for centuries in the traditions of both Islam and...
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