If you know someone with a 20th birthday coming up, you’ll want to tuck this word away in your pocket: vigesimal. It means “having to do with the number 20,” and comes from Latin vigesimus, or “twentieth,” a relative of both vente and vignt, the...
Careful what you criticize! Not long ago, some words that sound perfectly normal today were considered gauche and grating on the ear. If the complainers had had their way, we couldn’t say a word like pessimism or use contact as a verb! Also, we’ll...
Mitch in Miami works with video playback systems for theme parks and museums, where to ingest a file is to load outside video into the system. Taking it back out is more than simply deleting it, he says, because clients may assume that’s quick and...
Store clerks: If someone asks for a case quarter in change, it means they don’t want two dimes and a nickel or five nickels. They want a single 25-cent piece. Same for a case dollar, case dime, or case nickel. The customer is asking for a single...
Grant’s 7-year-old son has gotten into Ancient Greek, of all things. While it’s a joy to teach your kids interesting things, a child’s eagerness to learn also poses a challenge for parents. You don’t want to squelch their curiosity by forcing things...
Giving your baby an unusual moniker may seem like a great idea at the time. But what if you have second thoughts? One mother of a newborn had such bad namer’s remorse, she poured out her heart to strangers online. Speaking of mothers and daughters:...