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Rearranging letters as anagrams can be an entertaining aged worm (or word game). For example, you can switch around the letters in listen to make the word silent. Dormitory can be rearranged to form dirty room, and Morse code makes here come dots...
If you’re ever near a sundial, step closer and look for a message. Many sundials bear haunting, poetic inscriptions about the brevity of life. Plus, language development in toddlers: why and how little ones pick up the exclamation Uh-oh! And a...
A middle-schooler in Waukesha, Wisconsin, wonders why the word island contains the letter S, and why is it pronounced with a long I and no S sound? In Old English, this word for dry land surrounded by water was igland, coming from words that mean...
Some of us can’t go anywhere without a book or something to read. And one fast food joint hears you: Chipotle is now printing the work of famous writers on their paper cups. Speaking of fast food, saying that someone is two plums short of a...
If you were stranded on a desert island, wouldn’t you get to thinking how odd it is that we don’t pronounce the s in island? It was added during the Renaissance in an attempt to make the word look more like its Latin source, insula. This...
box office n.— «There are swept tip designs that lessen the factors contributing to noise and some noise canceling technology has been tested inside the cockpit (or “box office” if it’s a female crew [g]).» —“Re: Silent...