Ever thought there ought to be an English word for this or that phenomenon? Such holes in the language are called lexical gaps. A listener in Ontario, Canada, notes that English lacks a single word for the mistake voice-to-text programs make when...
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...
Slatch, a 17th- and 18th-century word, means a brief respite or interval, especially a short spell of weather. It appears in the example, We must wait for a slatch of fair weather, and it is a nice companion to the British forecast phrase bright...
Mia in Sumter, South Carolina, wonders: Is there a better term than adult child to describe one of your children who’s now a grownup? It’s hard to come up with a better, one-word expression for one’s adult offspring, and words such as spawn...
Hate it when a software upgrade is worse than the previous version? We call that a flupgrade, or a new-coke. As in, “Skype really new-coked it with version 5.3.0.” Come on, Skype! This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Bad Upgrades”...