If you catch your blue jeans on a nail, you may find yourself with a winklehawk. This term, adapted into English from Dutch, means “an L-shaped tear in a piece of fabric.” And: What’s your relationship with the books on your...
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...
What’s your hobby? Or, rather, do you call your interests or passions hobbies at all, or does the word hobby connote something frivolous or strangely obsessive? The term hobby goes back to a nickname for a horse, which transferred to the...
pishing v.— «Birders are a passionate flock. They will travel anywhere to get a glimpse of a rare bird. They will watch TV and look for birds, laughing at Hollywood if they hear a common loon in the desert. They think and even talk like...
zot v.— «That was only _one_ of the times he was struck by lightning while filming the movie. He got zotted twice.» —“Re: The Passion of Mel” by groo Usenet: alt.fan.cecil-adams Feb. 20, 2004. (source: Double...
therapism n.— «Therapism is an overvaulation of feeling. In a real sense, it is a tyranny of feelings where women have come to believe that what realy counts in their life is their “psychology.”…We might say that...