7 Animals With Grand Mythological Names
Like proud parents, scientists often give their discoveries the biggest, most impressive names they can think of.
Like proud parents, scientists often give their discoveries the biggest, most impressive names they can think of.
Here are 15 etymologies to answer the questions of future English speakers. Because the future is already here.
Many of Philadelphia’s suburbs have been around since before the American Revolution, and some are even as old as Pennsylvania itself. But how did they get their names?
'Smith' is an Old English name that was given to those who worked with metal. It's probably related to a word that meant "to strike." Where does your last name come from?
Lots of languages have distinct plural forms for "you." Wouldn't it be useful if English had one too?
Now the names for these creatures big and small make total sense.
“Blown to smithereens” is such a great, colorful phrase. Almost everyone knows exactly what you mean, without being able to define what exactly a smithereen is. What the heck are they?
Named after the great Roman emperor, Julius Caesar, yet he was not the first baby born by the procedure.
Even the Oxford English Dictionary admits they have no evidence of the actual origin.
Whatever significance the number nine had to the phrase, it doesn’t seem to have always been specific to clothing.
Throughout the ages, people have hung some pretty weird names on what’s ailed them. Here are the monikers of a few of the more strangely-named illnesses, and how we know them today.
Quack, in the sense of a medical impostor, is a shortening of the old Dutch quacksalver (spelled kwakzalver in the modern Dutch), which originally meant a person who cures with home remedies, and then came to mean one using false cures or knowledge.
Until a few decades ago, Ukraine was almost always referred to as the Ukraine. Then people started dropping the definite article, and now you almost never see it. What gives?
Daven Hiskey runs the wildly popular interesting fact website Today I Found Out. To subscribe to his “Daily Knowledge” newsletter, click
Daven Hiskey runs the wildly popular interesting fact website Today I Found Out. To subscribe to his “Daily Knowledge” newsletter, click
Whether you end a letter or e-mail with it—or you recognize it from the end of each Gossip Girl episode—“Xoxo” is commonly known to refer to the phrase “Kisses and hugs.” But how did these two inconspicuous letters come to represent that well-known
“What exactly is a pigeonhole anyway?" semi-creepy fast food mascot Jack in the Box wondered on Twitter last month. "Last I checked pigeons live in parks.” Reader @amyh914 put up the bat signal and called us into
Daven Hiskey runs the wildly popular interesting fact website Today I Found Out. To subscribe to his "Daily Knowledge" newsletter, click
My dad always used to preface the dropping of an F-bomb or a tangent of creative profanity with a request that listeners “pardon his French.”
Around this time of year, we’re all loosening our belts and getting ready to gorge ourselves on hot, gravy-laden turkey. So we couldn’t help but wonder about things at the opposite end of the temperature spectrum: the “cold turkey” invoked when people up
There are two popularly cited origins for the phrase "let the cat out of the bag," but neither is very clearly recorded as leading to it.
Reader Jonathan wrote in to ask, “Why do we call other countries by names that they do not use themselves? Where did these names come from and why do we use them?"