Inspired by the biological process of cell division, Quiz Guy John Chaneski came up with a puzzle in which a vowel inside a word divides into two, as in the words cot and coot. If E and O are the only vowels that might replicate, guess what pair of...
Marta, who studies English in Kyiv, Ukraine, says she was reading Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (Bookshop|Amazon) when she encountered the word parasol, noting its similarity to a Ukrainian word for “umbrella,” парасоля. Both...
squeeze page n.— «Once someone has visited your site, they will often encounter what is known in marketing terms as a “squeeze page.” How it got that name, I’m not sure, but a squeeze page is really just a pop-up box or page that...
e-discovery n.— «Many of the lessons learned from the increased use of electronic evidence in civil litigation–“e-discovery,” in the parlance of litigators–may be applied to the burgeoning use of social-networking sites to...
excitation leap n.— «How, in fact, does a reindeer warn of danger? It jumps in the air—what scientists call an “excitation leap”—and then runs away. All of the other reindeer see the leap, see the running, and take off running, too...
backscatter n.— «Backscatter occurs when a spammer spoofs a legitimate e-mail address to send an unsolicited message to large distribution lists, causing the e-mail server to flood an unsuspecting e-mail address owner’s mailbox with...
