There’s a reason why we have both capital and lowercase letters. As the alphabet went from the Phoenicians to the Greeks to the Romans, letters took on new sounds, and the need to write quickly brought about the introduction of lowercase...
Q-tip cruise n.—Gloss: a pleasure trip aboard a trip, taken mainly by senior citizens. Note: So named because they have white hair and resemble the white cotton ends of Q-tips. «It was in mid-September 2006, the final cruise of the season...
A New York City schoolteacher asks, “Why do we call our little finger a pinkie?” and relates his invented etymology. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Pinkie, Little Finger, and Auricular: The Names Behind Your...
Q-dot n.— «Enter Marcel P. Bruchez, a Carnegie Mellon University associate research professor in chemistry and his amazing quantum dots. Q-dots, as they are called, are nanometer-sized crystallized particles with semiconductor properties...