WORDS

Dropping that ‘t’ sound is an example of what linguists call glottalization, or replacing a sound with a pause in the vocal cords.

You’re not the only person who has Googled “NPC meaning” of late.

You think you’ve seen every category of words … then you find this batch, including such oddities as tableclothwise and rabbitwise.

We’ve used the term ‘rat’ to refer to an informer since approximately 1910. But criminals have had many more names for snitches over the years.

“Wriggly, Squiffy, Lummox, and Boobs: What Makes Some Words Funny?” analyzed an existing list of 4997 funny words and recruited 800 survey participants to whittle down the collection to the 200 words the people found funniest.

Chicago may have been named after an Indigenous term for stinky onions.

Whether you call it Mischief Night, Devil's Night, or something else, it all means one thing: wanton destruction of property.

The origin of ‘towhead’ has roots in 14th-century England, when ‘tow’ often referred to textile fibers.

Getting a concept onto the big screen is a difficult process, and the pilot episode is what can make—or, more often, break—a series. By why is it called that?

When talking about the fundament, some terms have slipped through the crack of lexical history—so please enjoy these old and enjoyable terms for the hindquarters.

It took more than 70 years and tons of volunteer labor to create “the definitive record of the English language”—including an assist from a murderer. Get to know the Oxford English Dictionary better.

Though these words sound like fiddle-faddle, they have specific uses that go beyond yada yada and twittle-twattle.