Quiz Guy John Chaneski gathers clues to words that contain æ, the ligature called ash that can appear in such words as Cæsar. For example, what’s a dessert historically served after church services? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Default as a noun and default as a verb are the same word, with a familiar English stress shift: nouns often take first-syllable stress, while verbs often take second-syllable stress, as with the different pronunciations of record. A New York City...
Martha from Tallahassee, Florida, remembers hearing older relatives announce they were going for their constitutional, a term that traces back to Latin constitutio, meaning “character,” “disposition,” “nature,” or “the essence of a thing.” Its...
When a teenager went a week without talking as part of a school project, he noticed a surprising side effect: Instead of rehearsing a response to what other people were saying to him, he was focused on listening — and feeling smarter as a result...
If you take your finger and run it down your breastbone, and the end, there’s a little pit. In the 15th century, that little hollow just after the bone was called the heartspoon. This indentation is also called the pit of the stomach, or epigastric...
Rob and Andrea in Wilmington, Delaware, ask about a word they associate with southern West Virginia. It’s a word for something you “put on” bad behavior to shut it down, and it sounds like it’d be spelled something like quieenus. Their word is...
