Oct 29 2008
Every year around Halloween, we’re bombarded with images of glowing pumpkins, traditionally…
Oct 01 2008
Jul 30 2008
Conor brought this up, and when I looked into it I was too entranced to leave it as a mere comment. His post was to a great degree…
Apr 30 2008
This entry contains “bad” language, which may not be suitable for all readers. If you are uncomfortable with swearing, please skip this entry.
Feb 27 2008
There’s nothing inherently new or exciting in the word cacophonous; in fact, many of you have probably heard it before. It has a flair of the exotic, but it’s showed up often enough in the…
Feb 13 2008
“Ben,” I hear you saying. “Tell me you’re not doing an entry about a basilisk because you read about it in Harry Potter.”
Fear…
Mar 24 2007
Deep in the apricot’s tumultuous heart the hornet hums
—Melvin Walker La Follete
Thousands of years ago, beyond the pale of recency, in Lushan, China, a local doctor asked cured patients to plant apricot trees in their backyards in lieu of…
Mar 07 2007
You might be wondering why, in a segment normally devoted to esotery and foreign words, I’ve used something as relatively pedestrian as ‘catapult.’
Well, as in most cases, it boils down to etymology.…
Feb 28 2007
You might be wondering why I chose a rather pedestrian word like “precocious” rather than my usual kind of esoteric wonder. As it turns out, I happened to stumble across this interesting bit of…