Sensuous words and terms of endearment. Think of a beautiful word. Now, is it simply the word’s sound that makes it beautiful? Or does its appeal also depend on meaning? Also, pet names for lovers around the world: You might call your beloved...
Two familiar terms that have inspired lots of bogus etymologies are “dead ringer” and “spitting image.” “Dead ringer” probably comes from horse racing, where a ringer is a horse that may look like other horses in...
Lester in Dallas wonders why colleagues spell holistic as wholistic when they mean looking at a project as a whole. The standard spelling is holistic; the wholistic variant reflects folk etymology, a reshaping based on the tempting but misleading...
Confused about whether biweekly means “twice a week” or “twice a month”? Martha rants about why the using the words “biweekly” and “bimonthly” at all is a bad idea, period. This is part of a complete...