The word meme, coined in 1976 by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, goes way beyond social-media pixels. Meme captures the concept of “cultural transmission” of ideas in general, where customs and ideas spread from brain to brain. Which means memes have been around longer than Success Kid or Kermit sipping tea. Wildfire ideas have been around as long as humans have—in fact, discovering fire is …
Dictionary.com’s United States of Diversity series by Taneesh Khera Music resounds from every direction. Drums, brass, and strings clash against the cacophony of song and dance. The crowd, as diverse as the Black, Native, and European people who’ve called the area home for centuries. Smells waft in with the sound: from street-side vendors, gumbo, jambalaya, and cajun and creole spices you can taste in the …
Many people might be surprised to learn that the word taser is an acronym. The (debatable) non-lethal weapon that causes temporary paralysis was invented in the 1970s by a man named Jack Cover (who worked for NASA at one point). Cover aimed to create a non-lethal weapon that could be used in situations in which firing a real gun would prove fatal, like in an airplane hijacking. …
These funny-looking words may not be recognizable, but they were the ancestors of our modern-day umpire and newt. So, how did they evolve into their current forms? Because of the pesky letter n, the indefinite article a/an, and the fact that a bunch of English-speakers hundreds of years ago had hearing problems. The bouncing n and rebracketing Words like numpire and ewt underwent a process we’re playfully calling the …
Clickbait existed before clicking did “When you find out what these kids are jumping into, your jaw will drop!” “Baby ducks see water for the first time—can you BELIEVE what they do?” Confronted with such emotionally charged lines, it’s almost impossible not to click. Do the tykes tumble into a vat of chocolate syrup? Are ducklings reaching for toothpaste to brush their beaks? Can you …
Batman lurks like a bat in the shadows. Spider-Man slings webs like a radioactive spider. Superman is a literal translation of Friedrich Nietszche’s term ubermensch. And Wonder Woman is … well, what does Wonder Woman’s name tell us about her? A lot, it turns out. When William Moulton Marston created Wonder Woman in the early 1940s, he envisioned her not only as Diana, an Amazon …
