Even though the standard calendar year is 365 days, Earth actually takes 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 46 seconds to go completely around the sun. (This is called a solar year.) In order to keep the calendar cycle synchronized with the seasons, one extra day is (usually) added every four years as February 29. Where did this practice come from? Who came up …
COVID-19 has greatly increased awareness and knowledge of specialized scientific vocabulary among the general public. Some of us may remember high school lessons on concepts like DNA and RNA, and the exact role they play in the development of new vaccines. For the rest of us, however, a quick refresher is in order. Central to the discussion of the pandemic is the topic of vaccination. …
![List of words in outlined font, with central word in bold white font, on lilac background: “Janus word, buzzword, cussword, counterword [in bold], weasel word, nonce word, codeword"](https://www.dictionary.com/e/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/20220428_counterWords_800x800-380x380.png)
We love all kinds of words: big words, small words, words with silent vowels, and even the word moist. With that in mind, we wanted to find words that feature the word word in them. Without getting too wordy, we managed to find words like foreword, afterword, and doubleword that fit our criterion of being a word with the word word in the word. Being …
For millions of Asian Americans and Asian peoples around the world, the Lunar New Year is a time to gather with family, start the year off right, and eat a lot of delicious food. Like, a lot. One of the biggest holidays in East Asia, the Lunar New Year will fall on February 10 in 2024. Because it’s based on the Chinese lunisolar calendar, it’s …
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong famously sang about the controversial pronunciations of words like tomato (to-mah-to?), potato (po-tah-to?), either, neither, pajamas, and others in the song “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.” They settled nothing, and people have been debating the right way to say these words ever since. And those aren’t the only words that send people to opposing corners, either. There are a host …
Our universe is unfathomably huge and getting bigger all of the time, according to the Big Bang model and the theory of universe expansion. That’s a pretty cool concept and term, right? As the theory goes, dark energy (more on this later) is causing the universe to continually stretch itself. Studying the universe introduces us to some fascinating concepts in general: black holes, rogue planets, …
Are those reins on a horse or reigns? Is it rein in or reign in? Free rein or free reign? Confusion is understandable: reign and rein are pronounced exactly the same and are almost spelled the same—except for the silent G in reign (which is a big clue, actually). And both involve control. We’ll make it easy to tell apart rein and reign and remember …
So you have an important test coming up. Standardized tests like the SAT, ACT, GRE, and GED are a major part of the high school, college, and even graduate school experience, but prepping for these tests isn’t exactly everyone’s favorite activity. Each of these tests serves a different function in the high school and college admissions process, but no matter which one you’re signed up …
If you live in the United States, there’s a good chance that you’re familiar with Cinco de Mayo. You may even know that it means the “fifth of May,” and that it’s a holiday celebrating an important event in Mexican history. There’s also a good chance that you’re familiar with how Mexico is often tokenized on this day with, well, lots of beer and sombrero …
During the holiday season, we hear Merry Christmas countless times. How did we settle on this Christmas greeting? It’s not clear, but in the United States, the word merry is almost exclusively used in the Christmas season. Merry in this phrase means “festive or characterized by rejoicing.” One of the earliest known uses of Merry Christmas is in a December 22, 1534, record of a …
New Year’s Eve is full of traditions that are easy to understand. Counting down the seconds until the day the calendar changes, for example. Others are a little less straightforward. Case in point: singing “Auld Lang Syne”—or at least humming along while it plays on TV in the background. Don’t blame yourself if you don’t know the lyrics despite the song making the rounds every …
When Americans think of Canadian English, certain stereotypical Canadianisms found in pop culture might come to mind, such as the ubiquitous “eh” or the distinctly Canadian way of saying “about.” But there is so much more than that! Just like their counterparts in the United States, the people of the Great White North have a bunch of cool slang words for a whole range of …
