In 2006, the International Astronomical Union kicked Pluto off its planetary pedestal. In his delightful book How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming (Bookshop|Amazon) astronomer Mike Brown recounts the events leading up to the demotion of that...
Claudia in Cherryville, North Carolina, grew up hearing her grandmother call those spring-yellow flowers jonquils, not daffodils. In botanical terms, daffodil is the broader common name for flowers in the genus Narcissus, while a jonquil is one...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a quiz about unusual names for sports teams. For example, what minor-league baseball team has a name that appears to derive from the word for a large-scale weather event, but actually comes from the team’s proximity...
In the early 19th Century, a shy British chemist named Luke Howard self-published a pamphlet called Essay on the Modifications of Clouds, which proposed a taxonomy of cloud formations. To his surprise, the pamphlet captured the public imagination...
Will from Lexington, Kentucky, has a long-running dispute with his girlfriend. Is it appropriate to call the machine that launders your clothing a clothes-washing machine rather than just a washing machine? And why do we call the machine that cleans...
When it comes to job titles, the prepositions of and for can seem interchangeable and arbitrary, but they mean slightly different things. Of, as in a Dean of Student Conduct, is in charge of a particular area by themselves, whereas a Vice President...
