Mental Floss

WORDS

On May 6, 1751, the first U.S. cricket match was recorded. In honor of that game, and to decipher some of the seemingly complex intricacies for the uninitiated, check out these 15 corker cricket terms.

Angela Tung








istock / wikipedia

Scots is close to Standard English in the way Norwegian is close to Danish, which is to say, they are pretty much mutually intelligible. It’s possible to read the Scots Wikipedia and understand nearly everything, but there’s just enough unfamiliar vocabul

Arika Okrent


iStock

We experience the world through our senses, so it makes sense that our language should reflect those senses. This group of words traces back to the basic elements of taste: sour, bitter, sweet, and salty.

Arika Okrent




iStock

Whether you're a pinhead or prone to panic flips, make sure you know what you're talking about during your next turn at the pinball machine.

Angela Tung


istock collage

If you were born in 1991, not only do you have something in common with the World Wide Web, the Honeycrisp apple, and the Jerry Springer show, you got to grow up with these words that have their first Oxford English Dictionary citations in 1991.

Arika Okrent
sKrisda/iStock via Getty Images

Tiger, moon, and buttonhole are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to words you probably didn’t know could be used as verbs—so why not try dropping some of these into conversation?

Paul Anthony Jones








iStock

Humans have long been obsessed with the idea of man-like machines they could dominate—or be dominated by. But the word 'robot' is just 90 years old, and the blockbuster play that introduced the word has long since been forgotten.

Erin Blakemore