One way to make your new business look trendy is to use two nouns separated by an ampersand, like Peach & Creature or Rainstorm & Egg or … just about any other two-word combination. A tongue-in-cheek website will generate names like...
Ross, a Navy listener in Hawaii, asks how to pronounce Aegis, the naval combat system. The most common and oldest pronunciation is EE-jiss, while AY-jiss appears in recent American dictionaries as an acceptable second choice. The word goes back to...
Many English words have their roots in Greek and Roman myth. Tantalize derives from the story of King Tantalus, condemned to stand forever in a pool that receded whenever he was thirsty, and beneath a bough of fruit that pulled away whenever he...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s brain-buster involves changing the meaning of proverb by anagramming one of its words. For example, John says his friend owned a string of pottery franchises, but it all came to nothing when one of the ovens fell...
Did you ever wonder why we capitalize the pronoun “I,” but not any other pronoun? Also, the romantic story behind the term halcyon days, the origin of the phrase “like white on rice,” and the linguistic scuttlebutt on the...
The weeks on either side of the winter solstice have a special place in Greek mythology. In the story of Alcyone, the daughter of Aeolus, she marries Ceyx, who arrogantly dares to compare their relationship to that of Zeus and Hera. Such hubris is...