A retired Montana listener says a buddy fondly referred to their friend group as geezers, a joking term for a person, usually male, who’s advanced in years, possibly with too much time on their hands. In 19th-century England, the word geezer more...
In response to our conversation about pangrams, those sentences that use every letter of the alphabet at least once, Sarah McCall sent us this advice: Just mask up and be extra careful that you don’t quit always sanitizing everything. This is...
Whatever Roget’s Thesaurus may have you believe, sinister buttocks is not a synonym for “left behind.” But a growing number of students are blindly using the thesaurus, or Rogeting, trying mask plagiarism. And it’s not...
The language of restaurant menus. Need a dictionary to get through a dinner menu? Research shows the longer the description of a particular dish, the more expensive it will be. Plus: What’s the best way to use a thesaurus? DON’T —...
voice writing n.— «In the US, court reporters have abandoned stenotype machines, whose keyboards use chord-like combinations to represent sounds, for a technique called voice writing. The “writer”—really a speaker—repeats...
snuba n.— «For an unusual type of underwater exploration in the Red Sea try what the Israelis call snuba. It’s a combination of scuba diving and snorkeling. Divers, who must be at least 8 years old, wear fins and a mask but breathe...