In an 1899 contest sponsored by a literary magazine, a reader proposed the word whifflement to mean “an object of small importance.” This is part of a complete episode.
Why do some people pronounce the word sixth as “sikth”? This is part of a complete episode.
Here’s a clever unparalleled misalignment, in which the word or words in one phrase are each synonyms of the words in the other, but the terms themselves mean different things: break ground and Cleveland. This is part of a complete episode.
How and why do words from one language find their way into another? Vietnamese, for instance, includes many words borrowed or adapted from French, a vestige of colonialism. For example, the Vietnamese word for “train station,” ga, comes...
Andre from Campbellsville, Kentucky, says his mother won’t watch a movie if it’s ary a bit violent. What does the word ary mean? Spelled airy, ara, arey, or ery, this dialectal term a shortening of ever a, and means “any” or...
The archaic English word ruelle means “the space between a bed and the wall.” It’s adapted from French ruelle meaning “a small alley or lane.” This is part of a complete episode.