Is there a term for words that simply feel good as you form them in your mouth and say them? Linguists sometimes speak of mouthfeel, an expression borrowed from the food world. They also talk about phonaesthetics, the study of the sensuous...
The new book An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (Bookshop|Amazon) delightfully combines scientific writing with a literary sensibility and a gift for vivid similes. It’s by Ed Yong, who won a Pulitzer for...
In case you need a word for a really meaty burp — and what nine-year-old doesn’t? — 18th-century lexicographer Samuel Johnson has you covered. In his 1755 dictionary, he defines nidorosity as “eructation with the taste of undigested...
In the Scots language, pree means “to taste” or “sample.” If you pree someone’s mouth, then you give them a kiss on the lips. It’s a variant of the word prove, and cognate with Spanish probar, to “taste...
Hey, friends! Since we last emailed you, we’ve aired two new episodes of the show: Lie Like a Rug — Cut a chogi meaning to “take a shortcut,” plus sufficiently suffonsified, make ends meet, belly robber, slang from Albuquerque, gender...
You pick up what you think a glass of water and take a sip, but it turns out to be Sprite. What’s the word for that sensation when you’re expecting one thing and taste something else? Also, slang from college campuses, like ratchet and...