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Arika Okrent

11 baby-naming trends of the past

The whole cities-as-names thing goes back way farther than you think

 

The Klout score of 1903: A statistical study of eminent men

How do you measure the influence of important people?

 

The language Isaac Newton invented

Newton is credited with many, many scientific innovations. His linguistic creations, on the other hand, never really took off.

 

15 less-than-inspirational quotes from a book of moral advice

Reaching for the stars probably isn't the most practical advice after all...

 

11 spam comments that look like drunk thesauruses

Nothing is certain but death, taxes, and spam comments on your blog

 

Where did the phrase 'come out of the closet' come from?

This expression for revealing one's homosexuality may seem natural. But it's actually a relatively new thing.

 

8 symbols that we turned into words

How / and ♥ became words in their own right

 

Pop song titles are losing the love

In recent years, the percentage of music hits with love in the song title has been only 30 percent of what it was in 1980. Why?

 

7 ways we could tell that AP tweet was a fake

Take out your red pens, folks

 

The Pig Latins of 11 other languages

English speakers aren't the only ones who can make a pseudo-language

 

5 pairs of countries that Americans confuse

Newsflash: The Czech Republic is not the same as the Russia region of Chechnya

 

Why do people say 'um'?

It's not because they're nervous

 

9 extremely pretentious Latin and Greek plurals

What do you do when you're talking about more than one octopus?

 

What the spelling bee loses by adding definitions

Scripps is turning its National Spelling Bee into a vocabulary quiz. B-A-D D-E-C-I-S-I-O-N.

 

Where did the expression 'OK' come from?

It's amazing that we ever got along without it at all. But we did until 1839

 
 

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