Why you can’t let the beautiful, stupid, big cat in no matter how much she meows at you — There’s a reason you can’t get a show, American, furry, stripey, round, old, big, stupid cat, and it’s not just because she’ll probably pee in your shoes. The reason (and I should emphasize that it’s not a rule, but more like a language habit) has something to do with what’s…

Are “sphinx” and “sphincter” really related to each other? — A large portion of the words we use in English are sensible, law-abiding citizens that have evolved in the established fashion from Greek or Latin or the Anglo-Saxon in an orderly and predictable manner. But some words like to be heroes — to shock you with an absolutely bizarre etymology…

Swearing: How it started. How it’s going. — N.B. This is an article about the history of swearing, so do prepare for some R-rated language. We’ve been swearing roughly as long as we’ve been stubbing our toes or tripping over the (Proto-Indo-European) cat on the way to the (Proto-Indo-European) bathroom in the night. But the types of words…

Move over, Griffins and Manticores. It’s time for the Muscaliet and the Bonnacon to have a turn — Respect where it’s due: Our friends from the Middle Ages were churning out absolutely top-quality content from day one (476 C.E., specifically), and their righteous talent for posting is particularly apparent if you spend any time perusing a medieval bestiary. Most medieval bestiaries are derived from an early work called…

Brb, getting Swine Drunk and ordering myself some nachos — In 1592, the playwright and satirist Thomas Nashe wrote a pamphlet called “Pierce Penniless: His Supplication to the Devil” in which a broke student asks the devil for money in exchange for news about the seven deadly sins in London. The massively popular pamphlet served as an alternative to a…

Cellar door. Sell a door. Selidor? A deep dive. — The enduring myth of “Cellar Door” takes a few different forms, but each share the same basic structure: A Japanese visitor or an Italian expat or some unnamed philologists or J.R.R. Tolkien himself are heard to remark that if you’re able to divorce them from their literal meaning (because you…

Find out why all today’s ~coolest~ pedants are saying “wabbit,” “deasil,” and “squirk”! — Don’t squirk, but I’m feeling rather wabbit after putting this list of delightfully obscure words together, so instead of a viduous bromatology by way of a preamble, let’s just get to the main course: Here are 17 wonderfully useless words that shouldn’t exist but do. As in, “If you think…

~I am once again asking you~ to bring back the Exclamation Comma — Some say the mightiest weapon ever imagined was Anduril — the Flame of the West — the sword that was reforged from the shards of Narsil, which was broken at the Siege of Barad-dûr when Elendil fell to Sauron. You’ll also find plenty of proponents for Mjölnir, the mythical hammer…

All about the delightful phenomenon of “Janus Words” — They’re called contronyms, antagonyms, auto-antonyms (shudder), and enantiodromes (fun!), but by far the nicest thing they’re called is “Janus Words,” after the (literally) two-faced Roman god Janus, who presided over doorways, gates, and transitions, looking backwards and forwards at the same time — just one of the many gnarly things…