Mental Floss

WORDS



FX Network

The latest season of The Americans is wrapping up tonight, so it's time to make like deep-cover 1980s Soviet agents Philip and Elizabeth Jenkins, put on a wig, and take surveillance of these 10 spy and Cold War terms.

Angela Tung








Portrait of Robert Burns, painted by Alexander Nasmyth.

Polish up on this list of words and phrases from Robert Burns’s complete works. Highlighting the imagination of his Scots language, they are ripe for revival by Robbie revelers old and new.

Jared Spears


getty images/istock

Terms that first appeared in print in 1915 reveal something about life a hundred years ago. Although the war in Europe left its mark on the lexicon, there are also signs of the changing times in arts and culture.

Judith Herman


istock

The U.S. words of the year for 2014 included vape, culture, and #blacklivesmatter. But what about the rest of the world? Here are the word of the year winners from 13 other countries.

Arika Okrent


iStock/crisserbug

Cartoons, comics, and newspaper comic strips might seem like an unusual source of new words and phrases, but here are the stories behind 10 times when precisely that happened.

Paul Anthony Jones
SasinParaksa iStock via Getty Images

'Smith' is an Old English name that was given to those who worked with metal. It's probably related to a word that meant "to strike." Where does your last name come from?

Alvin Ward








iStock/hkuchera

From bears and storks to singing wolves and castrated sheep, all 16 of the words listed here have surprising zoological origins.

Paul Anthony Jones
iStock

Sauce has come a long way from its original noun meaning, passing through idiom, to adjective, to adjective-forming suffix. Still, it has kept in touch with its roots.

Arika Okrent