Dan from Elmira, New York, wonders if there’s such a thing as “structural” onomatopoeia, where the visual appearance or architecture of a written word suggests the meaning of the word. For example, he says, the word level is a...
Many of us struggled with the Old English poem “Beowulf” in high school. But what if you could actually hear “Beowulf” in the English of today? There’s a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley that uses contemporary...
Look up into the night sky, and imagine that you’ve never heard the term Milky Way. What would you call that glowing band of stars across the heavens? In Sweden, it’s called Vintergatan, or “Winter Street.” In Hawaii, the...
Jessica in Indianapolis, Indiana, says her field of software development, rubber duck applies to a situation where you describe a problem you’re struggling with to someone else, and in the process of explaining it, you hit upon the solution...
For German speakers, Sauregurkenzeit is that period of time in late summer when nothing much is happening, known in English as the dog days. The German term derives from sauer, “sour,” and Gurke “cucumber,” plus Zeit or...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski unleashes some quizzical canine conundrums. For example, if you playfully tap a dog on the nose, you boop him. Change one letter and you have the doggolingo term for what happens when dogs stick out their tongues but then...