The months of September, October, November, and December take their names from Latin words meaning “seven,” “eight,” “nine,” and “ten.” So why don’t their names correspond to where they fall in the year? The answer lies in an earlier version of the...
Gnarly, in surf talk, means a wave or wipeout that’s big, nasty, heavy, complicated, and maybe dangerous, the kind of challenge that can be bad news and, for a surfer, exactly the point of getting out in the water in the first place. Andrew from...
Betty in Idlewild, California, notices that when she repeats a word while writing, even an ordinary one like among, it can start to look misspelled or meaningless. That temporary blanking-out is called semantic satiation, the mind’s sense that a...
