words

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The other day I posted about a new phobia, Trypophobia and I linked to the site phobialist.com that features a list of 621 phobias, in case you needed one. Well, I couldn’t help myself. I just had to spend sometime reading what some people are afraid of. Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is the irrational fear of long words – go

Most phobias are irrational fears that some people are born with or have developed over time. A classic is Claustrophobia – fear of enclosed spaces. I have a fear of heights which, I presume, a lot of people have because there are 5 names for it – Acrophobia, Altophobia, Batophobia, Hypsiphobia or Hyposophobia. Trypophobia is the fear of

Mental Floss just shared a post about 8 back to school items with a story. One of these products is Elmer’s Glue. Apparently when the glue was first introduced in 1947, it didn’t sell very well. However, once the company added the face of a bull to the product, sales took off. Here is the

I was doing a cryptic crossword puzzle the other day and I had one clue left unsolved. The clue was “German sub.” Finally, I caved and looked it up, with the help of Google.  The answer was Ersatz. It is defined as something inferior, a substitute for the real thing, such as artificial rubber or coffee

Some of my posts lately have been about “stand alone absolutes,” such as the concept of “nothing” or “something” or just simply “being.” As a result I couldn’t resist a post about the “Ablative Absolute.” Let me explain. The “Ablative Absolute,” which, by the way, this has nothing to do with voiding your bladder 🙂

I wrote a post the other day on idioms using the word “tongue.” It got me thinking of the strangeness of idioms and how I really didn’t have another language to compare our idioms with. Well, a quick google search brought me this article in The Guardian and this amazing list of idioms in other

Years ago I heard the term Glossolalia. Biblically it means speaking in tongues – uttering incomprehensible syllables, usually as part of a religious experience. Although it has strong links with Christianity, it is also a practice used by shamans, the Oracle of Delphi and really bad actors 🙂 This got me thinking of all the