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...
Is there a synonym for the word synonym? Yes, there are two: polyonym and poecilonym, but they’re rarely seen except in collections of unusual words. This is part of a complete episode.
The word sacrilegious, describing something that violates the sacred, is tricky to spell. It’s easy to assume that it contains the word religious, but it doesn’t. Sacrilegious derives from sacrilegus, a Latin word that means a stealer of...
A thesaurus, a collection of synonyms, derives its name from the Latin word thesaurus, or literally, “treasury.” This is part of a complete episode.
Here’s a riddle: What seven-letter word becomes longer when the third letter is removed? This is part of a complete episode.
Just so you know, there are more exciting ways to spell yes. Yass, yiss, and other variants including more S’s are used both in speech and informal writing to convey added enthusiasm and personality. This is part of a complete episode.