WORDS

Defining the Times: 8 Words People Looked Up the Week of 3/20

For the week of March 20, springtime, politics, and tragedy drove people to the dictionary.

11 Playful Pieces of Pinball Slang

Whether you're a pinhead or prone to panic flips, make sure you know what you're talking about during your next turn at the pinball machine.

Defining the Times: 9 Words People Looked Up the Week of 3/13

For the week of March 13, holidays and politics drove people to the dictionary.

8 (More) Common Words You Might Not Know Are Irish

There are a whole slew of everyday words in English that have origins in Irish and Gaelic.

Defining the Times: 10 Words People Looked Up This Week

What news sent people to the dictionary this week?

11 Pieces of Piercing Bagpiping Slang

Dust off your feather bonnet and get out that kilt—today is International Bagpipe Day!

25 Words Turning 25 in 2016

If you were born in 1991, not only do you have something in common with the World Wide Web, the Honeycrisp apple, and the Jerry Springer show, you got to grow up with these words that have their first Oxford English Dictionary citations in 1991.

11 Words for People Who Hate Certain Things

Haters gonna hate. And with the Greek roots mis- and miso-, they can hate a whole lot of stuff.

11 Little-Known Words for Specific Family Members

The words we use for family members in English are specific about some things, but vague about others. These words will help fill in the gaps.

15 Words You Might Not Know Could Be Used As Verbs

Tiger, moon, and buttonhole are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to words you probably didn’t know could be used as verbs—so why not try dropping some of these into conversation?

Why Is It 'Eleven, Twelve' Instead of 'Oneteen, Twoteen'?

English number words are pretty logical for the most part, but eleven and twelve really don’t fit in at all.

33 Crass and Creative Norse Nicknames

Vikings had some really descriptive epithets.

9 Little Translation Mistakes That Caused Big Problems

Knowing how to speak two languages is not the same thing as knowing how to translate. Don't believe us? Here are nine times a little translation mistake turned into a big problem.

6 Significant The Silence of the Lambs Names to Sink Your Teeth Into

Much has been made of the hidden significance behind the film’s most famous line, but how about the names? From birds to gluttons to just what the heck “silence of the lambs” means, here's a look at the significance of six names from the film.

10 Ancient Greek Roots That Can Trip You Up in Modern Greek

Two thousands years is a long time. Even words that originated in ancient Greek can evolve considerably, even if their English counterparts retained the original definition.

8 British Expressions, Explained

The British have many delightful and colorful expressions that often make no sense to the rest of the world.

The Delicious Origins of 11 Fruitful Expressions

The fleshy, edible, seed-bearing parts of plants are a fruitful source of terms and phrases. We’ve picked eleven for you.

The Play That Gave Us the Word Robot

Humans have long been obsessed with the idea of man-like machines they could dominate—or be dominated by. But the word 'robot' is just 90 years old, and the blockbuster play that introduced the word has long since been forgotten.

Do You Use One of 2015's Worst Passwords?

"123456" and "password" users, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

21 Amusing Greek-Americanisms English Speakers Might Recognize

Daráit!

12 “Made-in-Japan” English Terms that Might Confuse English Speakers

These English words have been so thoroughly Japan-ized, they're barely recognizable.

11 Words for Fictional Substances

In science fiction, fantasy, and superhero stories, people frequently do the impossible—fly at light speed, travel through time, be Superman, etc. The creators of such stories sometimes try to do something even more impossible by scientifically explaining

The American Dialect Society's Word of the Year is 'They'

A big night for the gender-neutral singular pronoun.

51 Wonderful Words With No English Equivalent

Sometimes we must turn to other languages to find the perfect word (or 'le mot juste') for a particular situation. Here are a bunch of foreign words with no direct English equivalent.

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