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Weekend Word Wrap: eponyms

Some of you might recall the Weekend Word Wrap from some moons ago on malapropisms. A malapropism, of course, is an eponym first and foremost as it takes its name from a person. Okay, in this case a fictitious person, Mrs. Malaprop, from Sheridan's 1775 play, The Rivals, but a person nonetheless. Most eponyms, however, are usually named after actual people, generally their surnames. Our word algorithm, for instance, comes from the word Algoritmi, which is the Latinization of the 9th century... READ ON

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Weekend Word Wrap

Today's Word Wrap keeps on with our tradition of bringing you the hippest, most happening new words and phrases being coined, as they're coined... well, okay, with at least a 5-second delay, "˜cause, let's face it, a blog that brands itself as SMART certainly don't wanna look all stupid and bleep. Today's sparkling entries, as usual, are brought to you by the good folk over at wordspy.com menoporsche (MEN.uh.por.shuh; MEN.uh.porsh) n. Angst and anxiety exhibited by some men... READ ON

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Weekend Word Wrap: obscure and obsolete words

Though today's Word Wrap is on obscure or obsolete words, I have to start by sending you over to a related site called WordCount.org, created by Jonathan Harris in conjunction with the FABRICA studio of Italy. If you love words like I do, and if you're a regular reader of the Word Wrap, I assume you must, you have to check it out. They visually rank the top 86,800 most commonly used words in the English language from "the" (most common) to "conquistador" (least... READ ON

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Weekend Word Wrap: SCRABBLE

I turned on the TV the other day and they were showing Rosemary's Baby. It was right at that part where the Scrabble letters help a very young and beauteous Mia Farrow figure out what's going on in that OTHER apartment in the Dakota. It got me wondering: who the heck invented Scrabble, anyway? Turns out, had the Great Depression never happened, the board game we love so much (1 out of every 3 homes in America owns it) might never have been invented. In the early 1930s, unemployed... READ ON

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Weekend Word Wrap: Reversibles

In doing some research for today's Word Wrap, I learned in addition to reversible quilts and jackets, there's a big market in children's reversible clothing. A woman in the UK, for instance, makes and sells nothing but. And I've got to link to her website, if only to type out its name here: two-witt-too-woo. How cute is that? So maybe it's the child in me that loves reversible words. Not to be confused with palindromes like "kayak" or "rotator,"... READ ON

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Weekend Word Wrap: Euphemisms

In the beginning there was the word"¦ you just couldn't say it. That's right, euphemisms can be traced all the way back to the Bible, to the Ten Commandments, to be more exact, where the Hebrews were specifically instructed not to take their Lord's name in... READ ON

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Weekend Word Wrap: Yiddish 101

With the start of the Jewish holidays coming up next week, I thought I'd use the Word Wrap to drop some Yiddish on you all. For those who don't know, Yiddish is about 1000 years old and developed over centuries in Europe and Eastern Europe as Jews migrated, or were forced from country to country. Though it has a Germanic core, it is written in Hebrew and contains thousands of words from many other Slavic languages. For millions of Jews, it was the vernacular, their every day language, and... READ ON

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Weekend Word Wrap: Paging Doctor

Now that the summer is unofficially over, and we're all wishing it wasn't, I thought one way at least to pretend like casual Fridays are still in effect is to play a little casual word game. For those wordies who haven't yet had the fun of playing this one, the game is called "Paging Dr." and goes like this: You begin your sentence with "Paging Dr._____" and then fill in the blank with a made-up doctor's name, using the last name first, and then the... READ ON

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Weekend Word Wrap: Tom Swifties

Some years ago, I was reading a book of short stories called Birds of America, by one of my favorite authors, Lorrie Moore, and happened upon my first Tom Swifty. In the story, "Community Life," a few of Moore's characters are librarians and pass their downtime at work thinking up good ones like, "I have to go to the hardware store, he said wrenchingly" or "There's never been an accident, she said recklessly." The phrase "Tom Swifty" was... READ ON

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Weekend Word Wrap

Today's Word Wrap keeps on with our tradition of bringing you the hippest, most happening new words being coined, as they're coined... well, okay, with at least a 5-second delay, "˜cause a blog that brands itself as SMART certainly don't wanna go lookin' all stupid and bleep. Today's sparkling entries come to you via the good folk over at Word Spy: guyliner n. Eyeliner designed for and used by men. (Citations) rejuvenile n. An adult who enjoys activities and things normally... READ ON