Jazz Up Your Vocabulary With Mental Floss’s 2025 Word Nerd Desk Calendar

All self-proclaimed and aspirational word nerds are in for a treat: Mental Floss and Andrews McMeel Publishing teamed up to create a desk calendar specifically for you.

The Word Nerd 2025 Day-to-Day Calendar is just like any other desk calendar in that it will remind you what day it is (and whether any holiday is being celebrated on that day, from global classics like Christmas to deeper cuts like National Ampersand Day). But what other calendar will tell you that gas-pipes is an old Victorian term for especially tight pants?

That particular term is classified as an “Old-Fashioned Word to Bring Back,” one of many colorful categories you’ll encounter in the Word Nerd Calendar. On a “Collections of Creatures” page, for example, you’ll learn what to call a given group of animals (multiple owls is a parliament, while multiple larks is an exaltation). There’s also “Author Originals,” which are words coined by writers; “Historical Curses,” which will help you spice up your cussing without offending sensitive ears; and many more.

It’s not exactly a word-of-the-day calendar, because sometimes you’ll get a whole expression—along with an explanation of how it came to be. Unsurprisingly, lots of expressions originated with literal meanings before people started using them figuratively. But you might be surprised to learn exactly what those literal meanings were (e.g. close, but no cigar).

The calendar measures 4.5-by-4.5-inches and features an easel backer that makes it easy to prop up or lay flat on your desk. And the tear-off pages are only printed on one side, so you can use the blank backs for your own notes—appointments, birthdays, phrases you coined that you’re hoping will catch on, etc. 

It’s officially on sale on Tuesday, August 6, but you can pre-order it online now. Learn more on the Andrews McMeel website.

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