Words of the Year for 2024What a year — a vertible tsunami of neologisms, like brainrot, slop, enshittification, rawdogging, looksmaxxing, and delulu.Jan 7Jan 7
The Legacy of Cab Calloway: Swing Music and the Slang of JazzLearn how a famous American singer influenced swing music and popularized jazz slang. Can you dig it?Nov 21, 2024Nov 21, 2024
Playing Chess with Pigeons: The Struggle Against Dogma and IgnoranceLearn how the vivid metaphor of “playing chess with pigeons” perfectly highlights the futility of engaging with those unwilling to accept…Oct 31, 20241Oct 31, 20241
Exploring the Beautiful Archaic Words in Winter’s TaleLearn and add some fascinating archaic and obsolete words to your vocabularyOct 5, 2024Oct 5, 2024
One Quirky Man’s Quest to Preserve the English LanguageThe fascinating story and enduring legacy of Samuel Johnson’s English DictionaryMay 3, 2024May 3, 2024
The Fascinating Origin of “Clothes Make the Man”Unraveling the proverbial thread that leads from Twain to Erasmus to Quintilian to HomerMar 22, 2024Mar 22, 2024
Why Do We Say Something Has All the “Bells and Whistles”?The fascinating origin and evolution of a common idiomJan 25, 2024Jan 25, 2024
The Heckler That Changed the Course of Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” SpeechLearn how a friendly heckler, a famous singer, inspired MLK to improvise and deliver one of the most famous speeches in American historyJan 16, 2024Jan 16, 2024
Published inCellar Door52 Words That Sound Dirty But Aren’tThese are all extremely innocent, family-friendly dictionary words. You may need to wash your mouth out with soap anywayOct 18, 202313Oct 18, 202313
Julius Caesar and Winston Churchill and Their Love of the HypozeuxisLearn how two famous speeches, centuries apart, are linked by a common rhetorical deviceSep 27, 20237Sep 27, 20237
