5 October 2026 The word tea ultimately comes from Chinese, which in Mandarin is 茶 ( ch’a ) and in the Fujian dialect of Xiamen (Amoy) is tiä or te . These words were borrowed several times into ...

2 October 2026 Use of enshittification exploded in 2023, leading to its being voted as the Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society when that organization met the following January. Enshit...

30 September 2026 Broadway is the metonym for the major theatrical productions in New York City, so called because many of the big theaters are on that street. But smaller theaters and productions ...

28 September 2026 The phrase Wild West usually refers to the American frontier, and it conjures up mythic images of gunslingers, cattle rustlers, Indian raids, and the dead-eyed lawmen who eventual...

Alt: Margot Robbie drinking champagne in a bathtub and explaining mortgage-backed securities and then telling the camera crew to "fuck off"

25 September 2026 The Tonys , or officially the Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, are, of course, named for Antoinette Perry (1888–1946), a Broadway actor, producer, and di...

23 September 2026 [ A version of this entry originally appeared as a Words in the News segment for paying subscribers. ] The Grammys are given out by the Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences...

21 September 2026 The Emmys are a series of awards given by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (ATAS) for excellence in the field of television entertainment and technology. They have been...

18 September 2026 Mayonnaise is a creamy sauce made from oil, egg yolks, and vinegar, lemon juice, or other acid. It is commonly used on sandwiches and hamburgers, in salads, and on French fries. It ...

16 September 2026 Marmalade is a jelly with pieces of fruit and rind suspended within it. It is now most commonly made primarily with oranges, but marmalade can be made with a variety of fruits; fo...

14 September 2026 The slang usage of tea to mean gossip is first documented in the early 1970s, although long before that the drink has been associated with gossip and the exchange of information a...

11 September 2026 [ A version of this entry originally appeared on 6 August as a Words in the News segment. ] The word centaur , of course, refers to the mythological, hybrid creature that has the ...

9 September 2026 The word gonzo is inextricably linked to writer Hunter S. Thompson, famed for his style dubbed gonzo journalism . In Thompson’s usage, gonzo is a highly subjective, first-person...

7 September 2026 [Updated from 29 May 2024: added antedating of booty call ] Booty is actually two different words, one meaning plunder or loot and the other referring to sex. Booty , referring...

4 September 2026 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet ... This seemingly pseudo-Latin, phrase is used in the typesetting industry as a place holder for text. It is intended to be a meaningless passage used t...

2 September 2026 The Hokey Pokey is a dance, and hokey pokey is also part of an old street vendors' cry indicating ice cream is for sale. It can refer to inferior or knock-off products. When stan...

31 August 2026 Pride comes to us from the Old English pryde or pryte , which had a core meaning pretty much the same as the present-day word. But strangely, its origin is quite different from th...

28 August 2026 EGOT is an acronym for Emmy , Grammy , Oscar , and Tony and is a status given to people who have won all four awards. To date, twenty-two people have achieved EGOT status with...

26 August 2026 A buckaroo is a cowboy, or in later usage someone with the demeanor and vibe of a cowboy. The word has a rather straightforward etymology: it is an alteration of the Spanish vaquero...

24 August 2026 Camp has a general meaning of temporary dwelling place, originally used in military contexts. But it also has a slang sense, originating in gay slang, of flamboyance or exaggeration,...

21 August 2026 Kinetic is an adjective that relates to motion; it’s a mid nineteenth-century borrowing from the Greek κῑνητικός ( kinetikos ). The noun kinetics , referring to the study of bodie...

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19 August 2026 In current parlance, a great white hope , sometimes simply white hope , refers to someone in a particular field in whom others place expectations and desires for success. Originally ...

17 August 2026 The phrase uncanny valley is a calque of the Japanese phrase bukimi no tani ( bukimi (uncanniness + no (possessive particle) + tani (valley)). The Japanese phrase was coined...