Ever wonder what medieval England looked and sounded like? In Old English, the word hord meant “treasure” and your wordhord was the treasure of words locked up inside you. A delightful new book uses the language of that period to create...
Do you refer to your dog or cat as “somebody”? As in: When you love somebody that much, you don’t mind if they slobber. In other words, is your pet a somebody or a something? Also, for centuries, there was little consistency in the...
While compiling the Oxford English Dictionary, lexicographer James Murray exchanged hundreds of letters a week with authors, advisors, and volunteer researchers. A new collection online lets you eavesdrop on discussions about which words should be...
Tom in Washington, D.C., says his Airbnb host misunderstood his comment about the host’s crack team of helpers. He was using crack as a compliment, in the same way that a crack shot has good aim with a rifle, and a crack regiment of an army is...
The adjective buccal refers to “pertaining to the cheek,” as in a buccal muscle of the face. The Latin word for “cheek” bucca also led to Latin buccula, “the cheek strap of a metal helmet,” then to a...
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...