A Woodbridge, Connecticut, caller tells the story of coming across the following definition for jungftak in Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary (1943): “n. A Persian bird, the male of which had only one wing, on the right side, and the female...
Greetings from radioland! It's another newsletter from "A Way with Words." This week was a brand-new episode, featuring a word quiz with *both* of our quiz guys, plus discussions of overuse of exclamation marks, bogarting, rattling...
The British publishers of the Collins dictionary have announced 24 words on their endangered species list. They’re words like “vilipend,” which means “to treat with contempt,” and “nitid,” that’s n-i-t-i-d, which means “glistening. “
Word nerd Ammon Shea quit his job as a furniture mover in New York City to spend an entire year reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary. The result, in addition to eyestrain, headaches, and skeptics’ puzzlement, was Shea’s new book, Reading the...
