If you catch your blue jeans on a nail, you may find yourself with a winklehawk. This term, adapted into English from Dutch, means “an L-shaped tear in a piece of fabric.” And: What’s your relationship with the books on your...
Before the search engine Google, there was the word googol. As mathematician Edward Kasner recounts in his book Mathematics and the Imagination, he asked his 9-year-old nephew Milton to coin a word for a huge number, specifically 10 to the 100th...
Welcome to another newsletter from "A Way with Words," where the hosts are the English teachers you wish you had in grade school. No tardies ever! Let's start with the minicasts this week. Special on sale just for you! Bargain at the...
“Great Googly Moogly!” A caller wonders where that exclamation comes from.