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Episode 1578

Today I Learned

Youngsters want to know: What’s the difference between barely and nearly, and what’s so clean about a whistle, anyway? Plus, adults recount some misunderstandings from when they were knee-high to a grasshopper. Kids do come up with some...

Lb. Abbreviation

Why is the word pound abbreviated lb.? A listener from Tijuana, Mexico, learns that the answer relates to his native Spanish as well as the Latin term for “weighing.” This is part of a complete episode.

Prefix “Hella”

Whether it’s bytes of data or intergalactic distances, humans are accumulating ever more massive amounts of data. But how do we use language to describe such mind-bogglingly huge numbers? There’s mega, as in mega-millions, and giga, as...

oil pulling

oil pulling  n.— «The procedure called “oil pulling” may help for edema. It consists of rinsing the mouth with one tablespoon of natural oil for 15-20 minutes and then spitting the oil out. It is done in the morning before...

computon

computon  n.—Gloss: in information technology, a measure of power or capacity of devices or systems such as storage, networks, or computer processors. Note: The more common spelling is “computron.” «A computon is a measurement...

groundtruthing

groundtruthing  n.— Note: OED defines this as “the action or process of establishing ground truth,” and defines “ground truth” as “information obtained by direct measurement at ground level, rather than by...

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