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Named after the great Roman emperor, Julius Caesar, yet he was not the first baby born by the procedure.
ETYMOLOGY
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.
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
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?"
The birds themselves? Not a whole lot. Chickens don’t even get infected by the virus — varicella zoster, a member of the herpes family — that causes the rash.
Adam's apple photo via ShutterstockTouch your fingers to the front of your throat and start humming. Feel around until you can feel vibration directly under your fingers. That’s your larynx, or voice box. It houses your vocal cords and is involved in brea
Point-blank is the range at which a given weapon/ammunition combination can be fired at the center or vital area of a given target and hit it without the shooter having to adjust the elevation of the weapon to account for the effect of gravity on the proj
The adjective "moot" means "open to debate." Yes, really. This is a dramatic difference from its common usage (at least in America), which basically means "not worth debating." A famous example comes from Rick Springfield's lyrics in "Jessie's Girl":
The Short Answer: No one knows, but the search has been interesting.The Long Answer: Getting a pink slip usually means you're fired.
Yesterday reader Nyghtbeauty asked, "What’s so special about 'the cat’s pajamas'?" We decided to find
David J. Peterson is one of many conlangers: people who invent languages. His most recent work is the Dothraki tongue shown in HBO's "Game of Thrones"; the spoken language had to be invented for TV because it's rendered in English in the "Song of Ice an
Always a bridesmaid and never a bride, B is the also-ran, the second best, the afterthought, the sidekick to the alphaletter A. When things fall apart, we go to Plan B; we’ll watch B-movies with B-list actors on basic cable if we can’t fall asleep; we’ll