If you know someone with a 20th birthday coming up, you’ll want to tuck this word away in your pocket: vigesimal. It means “having to do with the number 20,” and comes from Latin vigesimus, or “twentieth,” a relative of both vente and vignt, the...
Daniel in Nicholasville, Kentucky, says his grandfather would warn that if he got in trouble, he’d be in deep yogurt. That’s probably just a euphemism for deep doo-doo, deep foo-foo, or an even stronger epithet piled high. This is part of a complete...
Steer clear of the flu. You’ll groan on wet sheets. You will mew. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Flu Limerick” All right, so I’ve been digging around in the Omnificent English Dictionary in limerick form. Oh, yeah? Did you find...
Do you think dictionaries of obsolete words with definitions in limerick form are cool? If you’re annuent— meaning “nodding”— we’ll take that as a “yes.” You’ll find lots of them at The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form, also known as...
We’ll be celebrating the United States’ 250-year anniversary in about 12 years, and if you’re looking for a neat, shiny term for the event, how about bicenquinquagenary, or perhaps sestercentennial? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Adam in Indianapolis grew up with his grandmother’s warning not to split a pole, meaning that two companions shouldn’t pass on opposite sides of a lamppost, mailbox, or other street obstacle. The idea is that the physical separation hints at an...