Betty in Idlewild, California, notices that when she repeats a word while writing, even an ordinary one like among, it can start to look misspelled or meaningless. That temporary blanking-out is called semantic satiation, the mind’s sense that a...
Why do spelling bees use such strange words — often foreign words that almost nobody uses? Like cymotrichous, stromuhr, Laodicean, guerdon, serrefine, and Ursprache? We answered that question in last week’s episode — it’s what happens...
Should you use myriad or myriad of? Actually, either is fine. Here’s what David Foster Wallace had to say about the question in his commentary for the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus: “[A]ny reader who’s bugged by a myriad...
Greetings! In this week's archive edition (more about that in a moment) we discuss "bring" vs. "take," Facebook groups for grammar lovers, and singing the lyrics of "Amazing Grace" over the melody of...
Evan in Madison, Wisconsin, learned that peruse means to read closely and carefully but keeps hearing it used for a quick skim. The older sense was even stronger, meaning to use thoroughly, use up, or exhaust, and then later to pore over a text long...
Gail is trying to remember a “super great word” from an earlier episode that means “diarrhea of the mouth” — nonstop blabbering, blathering, or chatter. She thinks the missing term may begin with T, but rejects a parade of candidates including...