As we reported in our occasional e-newsletter, the recent discovery of dozens of previously unknown black holes has stargazers wondering: What’s the collective noun for a cluster of black holes? Our readers obliged with some clever...
Gila in Woodridge, Connecticut, wonders if there’s a connection between the adjective patient, meaning able to withstand delay, pain, or problems, and the noun patient, meaning a person who is sick. Both derive from Latin adjective patientem...
On Twitter @flaminghaystack asks: What if the person who named walkie talkies named everything? For starters, we might refer to a defibrillator as a hearty starty and stamps as licky stickies. This is part of a complete episode.
How would you like to be welcomed to married life by friends and neighbors descending on your home for a noisy celebration, tearing off the labels of all your canned foods and scattering cornflakes in your bed? That tradition has almost died out...
After Martha gave a presentation to the Special Libraries Association’s Southern California chapter, she was left wondering whether there’s a good collective noun for a group of librarians. A dewey? This is part of a complete episode.
Is it okay to use the word ask as a noun, as in “What’s our ask going to be?” Or should we substitute the word question or request? Actually, the noun ask has handy applications in the world of business and fundraising, where it...