We dish about the many terms for “gossip,” including hot tea, scuttlebutt, the scoop, the 411, the lowdown, the dirt, the scoop, hot goss, the poop, the dope, the T. In prison slang, grapes means “gossip,” and particularly...
Ever wonder what medieval England looked and sounded like? In Old English, the word hord meant “treasure” and your wordhord was the treasure of words locked up inside you. A delightful new book uses the language of that period to create...
While compiling the Oxford English Dictionary, lexicographer James Murray exchanged hundreds of letters a week with authors, advisors, and volunteer researchers. A new collection online lets you eavesdrop on discussions about which words should be...
Are the words proctor and proctologist connected? No. The word proctor, as in a university proctor who supervises or monitors students, derives from Latin procurator, from words meaning to “care for” or “advocate for,” from...
A caller wonders if she’s being hypersensitive about the way her boss addresses her in emails. Can the use of an employee’s first name ever reflect a power differential? And: a community choir director wants a term for “the act of...
The director of Common Voices Chorus, a women’s choir in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, seeks a word to denote what her group does when they get together to sing simply for the joy of singing and community-building, rather than working toward the...