WORDS

From our friends at Vocabulary.com, here are words describing people's behavior that are easy to confuse with other words, or easy to be confused about, period.

From bears and storks to singing wolves and castrated sheep, all 16 of the words listed here have surprising zoological origins.

They might seem straightforward on the surface, but hidden behind them is some remarkable quirk or bizarre piece of trivia that sets them apart.

Sauce has come a long way from its original noun meaning, passing through idiom, to adjective, to adjective-forming suffix. Still, it has kept in touch with its roots.

Last week, we published an item on how crossword puzzles are made. As many, many readers pointed out, we didn't have our facts straight. You deserve better!

Use all your tiles at once and get that 50-point bonus with these common words.

Sometimes, through some quirk of etymology—and sometimes entirely by coincidence—first names like these find their way into the dictionary as words in their own right, and end up ultimately taking on whole new meanings in the language.

The two prefixes are not equivalent.

You'll be looking for a way to work these adorable old-timey slang terms for sex into conversation—trust us.

We need to borrow these.

Thirteen of these etymological tall-tales, taken from word origins guide 'Haggard Hawks and Paltry Poltroons,' are explained and debunked here.

Even logophiles can improve their vocabularies by following these Twitter accounts.