WORDS

From the courts to the morgue, if the government doesn't know someone's name or wants to withhold it, they give them one of these as a placeholder. Why?

Fall is here, and you're getting hungry. Feast on this cornucopia of etymologies for seasonal veggies straight from the garden.

What is an Irish goodbye—and why is it called that?

Clichés are viewed as a sign of lazy writing, but they didn’t develop that reputation over night.

By the late 1700s, laborers adopted the insult to refer to workers who wouldn’t join a strike, a union, or take part in organized labor and undermined their fellow workers.

“10-4” isn’t any quicker than saying “OK.” But it is a storied trucker tradition.

From ‘cakewalk’ to ‘no can do,’ the origins of these common idioms and sayings are surprisingly dark.

The words ‘fall’ and ‘autumn’ appeared around the same time in Great Britain, but only one of the seasonal names is still used there today.

Non-Philadelphians can finally look up the meaning of ‘jawn’ in the dictionary.

Stick these terms in your cauldron and pass them around your coven.

History is filled with figures who were single-handedly—yet often undeservedly—held responsible for epic societal failures. But what do goats have to do with it?

We don’t know how these Victorian slang terms ever fell out of fashion, but we propose bringing them back, as soon as possible.