Judith B Herman

Judith Herman

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Judith B. Herman is a Southern California writer with a thing for words and pictures. She blogs about the adventures of Lexie Kahn, Private Etymologist, at WordSnooper.com and contributes to Behold, the photography blog at Slate. Thanks to Photoshop she uses her camera to document unreality.

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11 Strange Movie Job Titles—Explained!

Here's what the key grip, best boy, and gaffer actually do, plus the origins of those titles.... READ ON

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11 Names for Alphabetical Antics and Other Word Games

What do you call a word that spells another word backwards or a word that looks the same upside down? When terms for these orthographic puzzlers didn’t exist, logolologists were happy to invent some. Here are a few.... READ ON

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The Origins of 8 Curious Body Part Names

Why does the back of your lower leg have the same name as a baby cow?... READ ON

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11 More Words That Are Their Own Opposites

Every month on the 11th, we do 11 lists of 11. Judith B. Herman gets us started a day early.... READ ON

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14 Words That Are Their Own Opposites

You're about to stumble into the looking-glass world of “contronyms”—words that are their own antonyms.... READ ON

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12 Lonely Negative Words

Are you disgusted, disgruntled and disheveled? Well, unfortunately you’re never going to be gusted, gruntled or sheveled.... READ ON

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6 Words English Got From Hindi

During the British Raj, or dominion over India (1757-1947), English gained a number of words from Hindi and other Indian languages. Linguists refer to this as “borrowing,” but we’re not likely to return any of this linguistic wealth.... READ ON

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11 Words That Don't Mean What They Sound Like

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