Mental Floss

WORDS

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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
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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






iStock

In science fiction, fantasy, and superhero stories, people frequently do the impossible—fly at light speed, travel through time, be Superman, etc. The creators of such stories sometimes try to do something even more impossible by scientifically explaining

Mark Peters
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Sometimes we must turn to other languages to find the perfect word (or 'le mot juste') for a particular situation. Here are a bunch of foreign words with no direct English equivalent.

Bill DeMain, Haley Sweetland Edwards, Romy Oltuski, Stacy Conradt
FabrikaCr/iStock via Getty Images

Sometimes we must turn to other languages to find the perfect word (or 'le mot juste') for a particular situation. Here are a bunch of foreign words with no direct English equivalent.

Bill DeMain, Haley Sweetland Edwards, Romy Oltuski, Stacy Conradt








CBS

Few franchises have had the cultural impact of the various 'Star Trek' television series and movies, and nowhere is that more evident than in the snippets of dialogue that have become a part of the American vernacular.

Rick Marshall