10 Words and Phrases That Came From TV Shows
Television can be a hotbed of creativity (or mediocrity, depending on who you ask). But it's not just characters and storylines writers are coming up with—they also coin words.
Television can be a hotbed of creativity (or mediocrity, depending on who you ask). But it's not just characters and storylines writers are coming up with—they also coin words.
A world without Roald Dahl would be a world without Oompa Loompas, Snozzcumbers, or Muggle-Wumps. And who would ever want to live in a world like that?
The dictionary goes from aardvark to zozimus because "every dictionary has to start with aardvark; otherwise it would have to start with aback, which is just too boring."
Warning: dad jokes ahead.
"Fave" is new to the dictionary, but it dates back to 1938.
Hunting for new ways to express yourself that don't involve emojis? Look no further than these charming words and phrases hailing from the land of fire and ice.
Would you recoil in terror if spell-check ever stopped working? Fear not: You're in good company.
A group of mathematicians at the University of Vermont published a paper on positivity in the English language.
They may have been on people’s tongues even earlier, but 1914 marks the earliest year the lexicographers at the Oxford English Dictionary could document these words and phrases in print.
Whether it's selling seashells by the seashore or buying Betty Botter's bitter butter, some of these difficult phrases go way back to when elocution was practiced as routinely as multiplication tables.
They're not completely interchangeable.
What's the correct way to describe a group of your favorite animal? A "bunch of worms" may sound like a lazy descriptor, but it's correct.
The debate rages on.
Though he made his living as a writer, Ernest Hemingway was just as famous for his lust for adventure.
Winston Churchill had it down cold.
If there’s one thing wordplay aficionados like to mess around with, it’s the numerical value of the letters of the alphabet.
It may rankle purists, but American English isn’t the culprit.
There’s a minute, and then there’s a “hot minute.”
And we're powerless to stop it.
TMZ rejoices.
Celebrate National Doughnut Day with this regional slang for the tasty treat, brought to you by the Dictionary of Regional American English (DARE).
You may know how to spell “victory,” but here are 25 things you might not know about the country’s best-known gathering of logophiles.
Should've seen it coming.
Oops.