Word of the day: egging Something that happens on Halloween is “egging” — pelting a car or house with eggs in order to create a mess and play a prank. It can also happen in a theater, or at least it used to; when a performer was particularly bad, the audience might throw eggs. Rotten… Continue reading

One of the problems with similar, easily-confused words is that the more we rely on spell checkers, the more susceptible we are to mixing them up without noticing. Spell checkers at least notify you when you make a spelling mistake, and probably just fix it for you. But when you use a word — which… Continue reading

The January, 1881 issue of Gentleman’s Magazine thought it would be helpful to explain that “We call it Jingoism in England; in France it is called Chauvinism; and in the United States, Bunkum.” Interesting, at least, that both “jingoism” and “chauvinism” are still in use, but the US alternative — or at least what Gentleman’s Magazine thought… Continue reading

More about lipograms at the end. In the meantime, here’s a great one by Steve Chrisomalis: “Looking at this paragraph with confusion? I’ll aid you slightly. Is any odd gap, lacuna or omission obvious to you? Got it now? No? That’s right – this is a lipogram – a book, paragraph or similar thing in… Continue reading

If you look at a map of northeastern Russia, extending westward to Norway, you’ll see a giant peninsula. It arches over Finland and connects to Sweden and Norway, enclosing the Baltic Sea. Tracking eastward across the northern coast of the peninsula, there are various areas where different groups of indigenous people lived — and still… Continue reading

In English we already know that the initial three items in a sequence: first, second, and “third, are identified in a different way than then next however-many (fourth, fifth, and so on). But what about the other end of a sequence? Other than last, next to last, second from last, and the rest, can English… Continue reading

A pretty common trope is the crotchety old man who waves his cane at the kids in his neighborhood, yelling “You kids get off my lawn!” That gentleman is clearly suffering from ephebiphobia, which is fear of the young.  Although the syndrome is probably ancient, the word is quite new. It seems to have originated… Continue reading

If one time-traveled to the here and now from, say, about 1650, probably the very first thing they’d animadvert is that nobody animadverts any more. Or more precisely, they might animadvert (at least on their phone), but practically everyone has forgotten what “animadvert” means. In fact, everyone has forgotten so completely that “animadvert,” which in… Continue reading

English is definitely not among the languages where words are spelled phonetically. In phonetic languages, spelling errors are probably much rarer than in English, where they’re depressingly common. One of the problems with spelling in English is homonyms — words that sound exactly the same, but are different words.  There are some unusual homonyms lurking… Continue reading

If you visit Yale University, you might view the portico of Davenport College, or even catch a glimpse of the official banner of the university’s president. If you do, you’ll see a yale. Not, mind you, a Yale — that would be a direct descendant of Elihu Yale, who was a governor of the British… Continue reading