What’s the best way for someone busy to learn lots of new words quickly for a test like the GRE? Looking up their origins can help. Or, record yourself reading the words and definitions and play them back while you’re doing other chores...
Todd of Port Jefferson, New York, is looking for a positive term that goes beyond the absence of bias: not merely “un-hate,” tolerance, or colorblindness, but active kinship, curiosity, and regard across difference. One candidate is allophilia...
The words we choose can change attitudes — and change lives. A swing-dance instructor has switched to gender-neutral language when teaching couples. He says that using words like “leader” and “follower” actually works better...
Michelle in Fort Worth, Texas, says she answers nosy relationship questions with single as a jaybird, meaning comfortably unpartnered. That exact phrase isn’t common, but it fits a larger pattern: speakers detach as a jaybird from the familiar naked...
The Humans of New York series of portraits and quotations includes one subject’s wise observation about how a single offhand remark can change a life. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Offhand Remarks Have Lasting...
Brand names, children’s games, and the etiquette of phone conversations. Those clever plastic PEZ dispensers come in all shapes and sizes—but where did the word PEZ come from? The popular candy’s name is the product of wordplay involving...