2-18-09

Have you ever seen one of those drawings that spells a word, and when you turn it upside down it still spells the word? Turns out those things have a name -- ambigrams.

2-16-09

Gleeking.

2-6-09

The opposite of misogyny is misandry.

1-19-09

The term plushie denotes people who like to have sex with stuffed animals. This is different from furry, which denotes people who merely dress up as stuffed animals and then have sex with other people who are also dressed up as stuffed animals.

1-8-09

H is the ninth most common letter in English.

11-12-08

Some schools now consider "F" a swear word.

11-10-08

The plural of "eye" and "cow" used to be "eyn" and "kine." "Eyes" and "cows" were wrong words, like foots and oxes.

10-24-08

Romanian and Moldovan are the same language.

10-6-08

Freerice has been updated. It has 60 levels now, making my previous high of 47 extremely embarrassing. After much effort I was only able to boost it to 48. I can't imagine the words you'll see in the 50's.

9-21-08

Facebook borrowed a line from Google and introduced a Pirate language. It does make Facebook vastly more interesting.

8-26-08

Forgive this spate of vocabulary-related posts, but I continue to be floored by some of the words my students don't know. We've already had erudite, placid, and tome. Today's addition to "Boris's List of Words He Can't Believe Some People Don't Know:" renegade. Hasn't anyone played Bang?

8-21-08

A month ago, one of my students didn't know the word "erudite." That's reasonable, it's kind of an erudite word. Another student didn't know "placid." Now that's shocking, but hey, it's just one student.

Today, though -- I don't think I can ever come to terms with what happened today. My entire class didn't know "tome." Tome! As in, a common synonym for "book." Is this not as common as I think it is?

8-13-08

Flibbertigibbet. It's a real word.

7-30-08

Apiphobia is the fear of bees.

7-15-08

Pleonasm.

6-18-08

Schadenfreude is pleasure at others' misfortune.

6-15-08

If you take the O out of Damon's you get Damn's.

5-22-08

Esperanto isn't the only "designed" language. There's also Lojban and Toki Pona and probably others.

5-14-08

Felch.

This is one of those moments when I need to refrain from providing a definition -- or even a link to the definition -- if I want to keep this blog rated R.

4-28-08

Taking a stand.