We take our voices for granted, but it’s truly miraculous that we communicate complex thoughts simply by moving our mouths while exhaling. A fascinating new book reveals the science, history, and linguistics involved in human speech. And...
Rachel from Ashland, Virginia, wonders about the origin of paraphernalia, or “items belonging to a particular person or used for a particular activity.” In ancient Greece, the pherna was a bride’s dowry, and the parapherna was her...
Alex in Amarillo, Texas, says he often hears speakers dropping the sound of the first r in the word forward, sounding like foward or fuhward. It’s what linguists call dissimilation, where, when duplicate consonants are not far apart in a single...
When two people can’t gee-haw together, it means they don’t get along. The terms gee-haw, or gee and haw, come from farming, where a trained animal obeys a command to go left or right–to gee or haw, in other words. Noncompliant...
cargo cult economics n.— «With a new year ahead, what do we see as our future? How much of our growth and progress is real, and how much is what I call “Cargo Cult Economics,” where we end up holding sacks of straw? At the end...
cotton shot n.— «A cotton shot consists of the heroin and blood residues that are “pounded” out of a cotton remnant (sometimes an old cigarette filter) which was used in a previous injecting session to filter the heroin...