Beautiful English Online

Lethologica

"The state of not being able to remember the word you want." -- Unnecessary Knowledge

"Leth" comes from the Greek Lethe, a river in the underworld whose waters effaced memories. "Logica" comes from the Greek logikos, related to words.

 

Visuwords

Visuwords is an on-line graphical dictionary that demonstrates the connections and associations between words. Via Ursi's Blog. Thanks, Ann

What's wrong with this sentence?

The trial itself was comprised of 86 cancer patients.

International Tongue Twisters

The First International Collection of Tongue Twisters by Michael Reck offers examples in 108 languages.  It includes traditional tongue twisters -- like this devilish English one -- try saying it five times fast:  "Seth at Sainsbury's sells thick socks."  But it also includes a variety of clever word plays. French, for example, is full of homonyms that sound alike but are spelled differently, and its humorous word plays make the most of it, as in:

Mon père est maire, mon frère est masseur.

This literally means "My father is a mayor, my brother is a masseur." It's easy enough to understand in print, but when you hear it, it sounds like "My father is mother, my brother is my sister."

Via Deep Fun

Vocabulary Quiz

What "ambi" word is the opposite of ambidextrous? Binky was pretty close with ambiinept -- the meaning is correct. But the opposite of ambidextrous is ambisinister or ambisinistrous, meaning equally inept with both hands. Dextrous comes from the Latin word for right and sinister from the Latin word for left.

It Just Won't Cooperate!

What was the word the advertiser should have used -- and what does it mean? Via Brainiac

Past and Last

"Past" and "last" are often used interchangeably to indicate a specific length of time in the past, but they have very different meanings. Use "past" when you mean "previous," as in "He spent the past five years making a rubber band ball." Use "last" when you mean "final," as in "He spent the last five years of his twenty year sentence carving a gun out of a bar of soap."

Word of the day

thixotropic     Ketchup can be regarded as a highly viscous liquid, or a thixotropic (flows under pressure) solid. -- Robert Allgeyer