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The adjective "moot" means "open to debate." Yes, really. This is a dramatic difference from its common usage (at least in America), which basically means "not worth debating." A famous example comes from Rick Springfield's lyrics in "Jessie's Girl":
The Short Answer: No one knows, but the search has been interesting.The Long Answer: Getting a pink slip usually means you're fired.
Someone recently played "jute" on me with devastating results. I decided I didn't know enough quick, hard-hitting 'J' words. Here are 11 that I just discovered: 1. Jute A strong, coarse fiber from two East Indian plants often used in making burlap and gu
Yesterday reader Nyghtbeauty asked, "What’s so special about 'the cat’s pajamas'?" We decided to find
The alphabet, as best as historians can tell, got its start in ancient Egypt sometime in the Middle Bronze Age, but not with the Egyptians. They were, at the time, writing with a set of hieroglyphs that were used both as representations of the consonants
Don’t be down about your next panel of consonants. Instead, take the challenge as an opportunity to show off your newly acquired vowel-free vocabulary. Three-Letter
Earlier this year, Bill DeMain introduced us to 15 Wonderful Words With No English Equivalent. Now that you've integrated those into your vocabulary, here are 14
It never ceases to amaze me how many people (smart people, mind you) don’t know the meaning of the word alas.
After we published our list of 25 Brand Names People Incorrectly Use as Generic Terms, our wonderful readers responded with a host of other trademarked words and brand names that often get used as nouns and verbs. Here are 10 more! 1. JC wrote that Dumpst
Next time you order a chai tea from your corner coffee shop, take a moment and appreciate your killer multilingual skills.
Most modern alphabets start with the letter “A,” or a near equivalent. It was also first in line in the ancient Greek and Phoenician—from which the Modern English alphabet is ultimately descended—alphabets, too. Being the gateway to the other letters and
The Global Language Monitor estimates that there are currently 1,009,753 words in the English language. Despite this large lexicon, many nuances of human experience still leave us tongue-tied. And that’s why sometimes it’s necessary to turn to other langu
Many of the items we use every day, like zippers and escalators, were once brand names. Even heroin (which no one should use any day) was a brand name. Here are some trademarked names that are often used as generic terms.
You probably know that numismatists study and collect coins and currency, and you may even know that philatelists study and collect stamps. But other groups of collectors have their own less-heralded nouns, too.
A hapax legomenon (often abbreviated just to hapax) is a word which appears only once -- in a language, a single written work, or the entire body of work of a given author. According to Wikipedia: "Hapax legomenon is a transliteration of Greek ???? ?????
Most medicines and over-the-counter products have names that sound like unintelligible strings of chemical jargon, or sound like they were born in a focus group. But a few familiar drugs and products have names with interesting origins. Let's take a loo
The New York Times has an online feature that allows users to get dictionary definitions of words within feature articles. Just double-click a word, a question mark appears, click that, and you get a definition. Now they've crunched the numbers and reve
Carl Bialik of the Wall Street Journal brings us a smart article on overvalued points in games. In short, the issue is that rule changes in games like Scrabble (allowing new words like "qi" and "za") allow players a new way to exploit the system, throwin
Believe it or not, this sentence is grammatically correct and has meaning: "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."
I recently came across a link to 100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know, by the folks who brought you the American Heritage Dictionaries. The cool part is that they went ahead and printed the 100 words on the web site, leaving you to buy the bo