Books were rare treasures in the Middle Ages, painstakingly copied out by hand. So how to protect them from theft? Scribes sometimes added a curse to the first page of those books that was supposed to keep thieves away — and some were as vicious as...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has been puzzling over eye rhymes, words that look like they should rhyme, but they don’t, like tough and plough. What is the eye rhyme in the following sentence? When I play peekaboo with my [ ], I so enjoy the sound...
The new Downton Abbey movie is a luscious treat for fans of the public-television period piece, but how accurate is the script when it comes to the vocabulary of the early 20th century? It may be jarring to hear the word swag, but it was already at...
So you’ve long dreamed of writing fiction, but don’t know where to begin? There are lots of ways to get started — creative writing classes, local writing groups, and books with prompts to get you going. The key is to get started, and...
That sputtering noise when someone sticks out their tongue, puts their lips together, and blows is called a raspberry. No one knows the origin of this slang term, although it may have to do with that pileup of consonants colliding in the middle of...
“What has a head like a cat, feet like a cat, a tail like a cat, but isn’t a cat?” Answer: a kitten! A 1948 children’s joke book has lots of these to share with kids. Plus: an easy explanation for the difference between...