linguistics - Trivia, Quizzes, and Brain Teasers | Mental Floss

How to Tell Whether You've Got Angst, Ennui, or Weltschmerz

Is it angst, ennui, or weltschmerz?

How to Tell Whether You've Got Angst, Ennui, or Weltschmerz

Why Are Left-Handed People Called Southpaws?

Notable southpaw Tommy John pitching for the New York Yankees in the 1980s.

Why Are Left-Handed People Called Southpaws?

Why Do We Use the Word Mug as a Synonym for Face?

Historic pottery molds of Toby jugs from 1888.

Why Do We Use the Word Mug as a Synonym for Face?

Your Herbal Tea Isn’t Actually Tea at All—Here’s Why

Tina Witherspoon, Unsplash

Your Herbal Tea Isn’t Actually Tea at All—Here’s Why

Why Is There No N in Restaurateur?

A promising young restaurateur, ready to be called a restauranteur for the rest of her career.

10 Pun-derful Facts About Puns

Pun-derful, indeed.

Titular vs. Eponymous: What’s the Difference?

Miranda is an important character in Shakespeare's The Tempest, but she's not the titular role.

11 Outdated Nicknames for Marijuana That We Should Bring Back

Some future giggle smoke growing in California.

What’s the Difference Between a Fact and a Factoid?

WordArt.com

The American Dialect Society Needs Your Help Choosing 2020’s Word of the Year

They're debating whether it should be "the 'rona" or "Zoom."

What Is a Crony?

Wikimedia Commons//Public Domain

You’re Probably Pronouncing Nevada All Wrong

OwensImaging, iStock via Getty Images

12 Notable English Language Mistakes

She wrote "sneak peak" instead of "sneak peek."

Duolingo’s Free Virtual Convention Will Cover How “Black Languages Matter” and More

Classrooms are especially important places to embrace language variations.

More Than 650 New Words Have Been Added to Dictionary.com—Here Are 50 of Them

Online dictionaries can add words a little more quickly than their printed counterparts.

Absentee Ballot vs. Mail-In Ballot: What’s the Difference?

Liliboas/iStock via Getty Images