A new book about how animals perceive their environment reveals immense worlds beyond our own. A bee can see ultraviolet light, catfish have taste buds all over their bodies, and manatees use highly sensitive lips to examine nearby objects. Also...
So you think you can spell? Youngsters in modern spelling bees are expected to memorize a wide range of words, from chemical processes to names of rare animals. Also: In many languages, the word for “mother” begins with the letter M —...
Two words from the 2025 Scripps National Spelling Bee prep materials: avahi, a term for a woolly lemur of Madagascar, and saltigrade, which describes spiders and other creatures that have feet and limbs adapted for leaping. Saltigrade is...
The crossword clue is “bread machine?” The answer has three letters. What is it? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Bread Machine?” You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how...
In Scotland and Northern England, something that’s kenspeckle is “conspicuous.” This word likely comes from Scandinavian languages and is related to English ken, meaning “range of knowledge.” And it’s not just ken...
Jennifer, a seventh-grade English teacher in Kingsport, Tennessee, and her students have been studying the development of Romance languages, which got them wondering: When did the words romance and romantic come to be associated with stories about...