Latest articles by Arika Okrent
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How to tell whether you've got angst, ennui, or weltschmerz
feature Are you dissatisfied and worried in an introspective, overthinking German way? Or do you have sadness in your heart for the world that can never be?
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What's the difference between in- and un-?
feature Germanic vs Latin roots only provide some help
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The true origin story of the football huddle
feature It was actually first invented by deaf players
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15 awesome 19th-century street gang names
feature Do not mess with the Plug Uglies or Dead Rabbits
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21 fancy medical terms for mundane problems
feature Overdid it last night? Just explain to your boss that you've got a bit of veisalgia.
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11 common words that will boost your Scrabble score
feature M-A-X-I-M-I-Z-E
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Why isn't 'Arkansas' pronounced like 'Kansas'?
feature It goes back to two Native American tribes. And the French.
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29 adorable slang terms for sex (from the last 600 years)
feature When it comes to the ol' houghmagandy, a little mystery goes a long way
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Explained: English's 3 different prefixes for 'half'
feature Semi, hemi, demi
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Dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells: Why do we call weights 'bells'?
feature It dates back to a fitness craze of the 1700s
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How well does Mark Zuckerberg speak Chinese?
feature It helps that he gets such a positive, almost thrilled reaction to everything he says
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The secret emotional lives of 5 punctuation marks
feature From the angry period to the dramatic asterisk...
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5 words that are spelled weirdly because someone got the etymology wrong
feature Never run with sizars
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How an awesomesauce new suffix came to be
feature This etymology is seriously nerdsauce
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5 baffling foreign-language versions of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song
feature "Here is my kingdom, here is where I strive. Here I will reign as Prince of Bel-Air."
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11 facts yü should know about the umlaut
feature Ever wonder why the plural of "mouse" is "mice"? Blame umlaut.
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18 apple varieties with badass names
feature Bloody ploughman? Razor russet? These aren't your grandmother's apples.
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15 words you didn't realize were named after people
feature The hidden history of eponyms, revealed
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10 words with difficult-to-remember meanings
feature It's okay. We're confused, too.
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Why is 'colonel' spelled that way?
feature Blame the French — and a little tactic called "dissimilation"
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26 fancy, unusual plurals that work like 'attorneys general'
feature Be careful or the grammar police might slap you with multiple courts-martial
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Can y'all be used to refer to a single person?
feature The singular y'all is the Loch Ness Monster of dialect study
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15 words plagued by unusual silent letters
feature Damn you, tricky consonant clusters
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Check out these fascinating experiments in Ngram art
feature Words are strange creatures that do not necessarily behave as you would expect when graphed over time
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