Communicating by text often involves those colorful symbols called emoji, those cartoon-like images of everything from smiley faces to sushi. As of Summer 2025, there were some 3800 of them, and every few months, the Unicode Consortium adds even...
How do you organize the books on your shelf? Author Jane Smiley has developed a method that fellow book lovers will appreciate. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Some Large Book Piles Have Their Own Climates”...
Nothing brightens up an email like an emoticon. But is it appropriate to include a smiley face in an email to your boss? Also, what do time management experts mean when they say you should start each day by “eating the frog”? Plus, the...
Can you guess what a smiley is? No, the other smiley. Or how about tarantula juice? You could, of course, happen upon someone with a muffin top drinking inferior whisky, or you could look these terms up in the new Green’s Dictionary of Slang...
A listener has a question about emoticons, those little sideways symbols you type to suggest emotions in informal electronic writing. You know, like using a colon, dash, and a capital P to stick out your tongue like this 😛 or using a colon, dash...
cutensil n.— «German design firms Authentics and Koziol have made much hay out of plastic’s new pizazz. Koziol’s spaghetti forks with a smiley face, ice-cream scoops with eyes and the “Tim” dish brush with legs are some of...

