The words cushy, cheeky, and non-starter all began as Britishisms, then hopped across the pond to the United States. A new book examines what happens when British words and phrases migrate into American English. Also, if you speak a language besides...
Charlotte from Princeton, Kentucky, wonders: What’s the difference between a spider web and a cobweb? There’s a bit of semantic differentiation between the two: A cobweb is usually an old spider web, while a spider web that’s not old may still have...
Cobwebs are spiderwebs, especially the dusty, abandoned kind that need sweeping away. Middle English coppe or cop meant “spider” or “round thing,” and cob survives mostly in this compound. A related old word, attercop, combines a word for “poison”...