Sir Paul McCartney once wrote a song that included the phrase female pulchritude and luminosity. The word pulchritude means “beauty,” but why such an ugly-sounding word for such a lovely thing? Pulchritude derives from pulcher, a Latin word meaning...
To warn away thieves, medieval scribes sometimes added a written curse to the colophon of a precious book. Curses were once considered such powerful deterrents that they were sometimes added to Anglo-Saxon legal documents. This is part of a complete...
How did the first person to say a dirty word know it was a dirty word? Geoffrey Hughes’ Encyclopedia of Swearing is a great source on this. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “The First Dirty Word” Hello, you have A...
Dave from Indianapolis asks about toodles, the informal goodbye he learned from his aunt and now uses despite raised eyebrows. The word is a shortened form of toodle-oo or toodaloo, and it has been around for more than a century as a form of leave...
There’s nothing like a refreshing gulp of water, unless what you thought was water turns out to be vodka or Sprite. When the expectation of what you’ll taste gives way to surprise, shock, and offense, you’ve experienced what one...
