Jeff in Green Bay, Wisconsin, is looking for a specific word for “exhaustion after extreme physical activity, such as running a marathon.” Synonyms for exhausted include knackered and forswunk, from swink, meaning “to toil” or “to work hard.” In...
How do you pronounce the word macabre, meaning “morbid” or “gruesome”? The word may go back to the ancient Book of Maccabees, commemorated in medieval France with the danse de Macabré, often depicted in art as skeletons leading every type of person...
How do you pronounce pecan? Is it pee-KAHN or PEE-kan? And why are there different pronunciations of the name of this nut? The word pecan was borrowed into English more than once, and from numerous Native American languages that had variations on...
How do you pronounce the word mobile, as in the toy that hangs above a baby’s crib? In the United States, that kind of mobile is pronounced MOH-beel, but in the United Kingdom, it’s MOH-byle. In the early 1930s, the American sculptor Alexander...
The verb substitute has very different understandings depending on the prepositional company it keeps. For example, ask a barista, Can I substitute regular milk for lactose-free milk? and you’re usually asking for regular milk, not lactose-free...
Emily in Halifax, Nova Scotia, is married to a native Dutch speaker, who points out that they buy groceries in a store, so why doesn’t grocery denote just one of those items and not the store where they’re sold? Originally, the French...