Words

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On Halloween, witches and werewolves, ghosts and ghouls, and demons and devils stalk the streets for tricks or treats. But the real tricks and treats—at least for the horror-loving word nerds among us—might just be the strange and far-flung origins of the

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Pull apart the word "trivia," and you’ll be left with two fairly familiar Latin roots.

Let me put this right up front. The headline to this post is slightly misleading, but not dishonest.

By some accounts, the average person owns 19 pairs of shoes. But it’s not just our closets that are overflowing with sneakers, loafers, pumps, and wedges. It’s also our vocabulary.

These common birds are masters of the four-letter word.

Concepts like "nose" and "tongue" share some of the same sounds no matter what language you're listening to.

Some plurals work in unexpected ways.

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang pinpoints comedian Jimmy Durante as the first person to use this meaty metaphor.

Here are 20 American towns that have really cut the cord from the sources of their names.

Sometime around the 7th century, a grammarian got fed up and started collecting all the annoying mistakes that people kept making in Latin. He wrote them up in the 'Appendix Probi,' a straightforward list of the “say this, not that” variety.

You keep using that word…

Your beloved pup is paying attention both to what you say and how you say it.

Auribus teneo lupum means "holding a wolf by the ears."

Next time you spot a misbehaving child, or you want to seize the night rather than the day, you’ll have the perfect phrase at hand.

Make sure to use them the next time you dither.

You might be one of a lucky type who rarely attract bites, or you might be someone skeeters love to feast on—in which case, you’ll want plenty of ammunition for name-calling. Here are a few choice terms for mosquitoes courtesy of the Dictionary of America

Two swordsmen participating in the fencing semifinals during the 1948 Summer Olympic Games in London.

Wow your friends during your Olympic watch party with these winning, weird, and wonderful Olympic words and their origins.

While 'awesome' was going on its journey from bad to good, 'awful' was going in the opposite direction.

It's difficult enough to write a sentence that doesn't contain the popular vowel. (There are eight right there.)

The long tradition of bullying means a long list of words for bullies, many of which are lost in the mists of time. Though some words show traces of the wide-ranging history of bully—which originally was a tear of endearment—most of the following terms wo