Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s puzzle this week is inspired by social distancing. The first and last letters of each one-word answer are the same, but they’re separated by six letters. For example, what eight-letter word, beginning and ending with the...
Samuel Butler once likened definitions to a kind of scratching. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “A Kind of Scratching” The English writer Samuel Butler once wrote, Definitions are a kind of scratching and generally leave a sore...
The verb to chork means to make the sound your feet make when your shoes are full of water, such as after misjudging a puddle. The word has been recorded since at least 1721 in a Scottish writer’s description of wet feet after wading through glens...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s puzzle takes the definition of a word, and then alphabetizes all the words in the definition. For example, the definition of one familiar noun consists of the following words, but not in alphabetical order: “and army engaged...
If you think back on all the words you’ve looked up in the past year, only to turn around and forget their definitions immediately, Martha’s New Year’s resolution sounds like a no-brainer: be a little more mindful, and take care to actually remember...
Do dictionaries deal with copyright infringement or plagiarism when definitions match up between volumes? Since many modern dictionaries derive from the same few tomes, it’s common to see definitions that match. But lexicographers have been known to...