These days, giving birth to twins is increasingly common. As many as 5 out of every 1,000 babies born shared a womb with their sibling. While cute and adorable are some starter words to use when welcoming new babies, here’s a look at the lexicon to haul out when welcoming multiples! Fraternal twins vs. identical twins Fraternal twins are twins who derive from separately fertilized …
What is cacography? To answer this question, let’s look at one of our favorite authors: Jane Austen. She was known for her clean and eloquent prose and giving us such classics as Persuasion and Mansfield Park. But it seems the great novelist’s editor likely played a bigger role in Austen’s literary pursuits then previously thought. In fact, it seems that Austen may have been guilty of …
As you munch on guacamole and chips, chew on the etymology of the humble avocado. Its many names are as wacky as the fruit is yummy. What is an alligator pear or a fertility fruit? A biologist calls it persea americana, but avocado derives from the Nahuatl word ahuacatl, which also refers to a certain part of the male anatomy that the fruit somewhat resembles. In …
When was the last time you ordered a credit report? The paper document is abstruse enough, but you have to maneuver through the morass of oddly-named companies that produce them — Equifax, Experian, TransUnion and more. The process is abstract, but the results are concrete. There’s some new, and bad, news about those infamous numbers. More than a
