Publications

Perhaps ironically, the word “sesquipedalophobia” means “the fear of long words.”

“Contronyms” are words that contain multiple meanings that are complete opposites of each other. For example, “oversight” means both “the action of overseeing something” and “a failure to notice something.”

There are over 7,000 languages worldwide, but more than half the world’s population speaks only 23 of these languages.

The first entirely artificial language was the Lingua Ignota, a private mystical cant recorded in the 12th century by St. Hildegard of Bingen.

The 10 most-used letters in English are E, A, R, I, O, T, N, S, L, and C.

Eels, llamas, and aardvarks, ooh my! In English, there are only four letters that appear as double letters at the beginning of a word: A, E, L, and O.

A “deipnosophist” is a person who’s really good at making conversation at the dinner table.

Take the words right out of its mouth!

A cat has claws at the end of its paws, but a comma’s a pause at the end of a clause.

It was tense.

Unquestionably.

What did the intransitive verb say when told it was pretty? (Answer: Nothing. Intransitive verbs can’t take complements.)

What does an island and the letter T have in common? (Answer: They’re both in the middle of water.)

What word becomes shorter when you add two letters to it? (Answer: Short)

What starts with an e, ends with an e, and contains just one letter? (Answer: An envelope!)

What begins with a t, ends with a t, and has t in it? (Answer: A teapot!)

What’s in centuries, hours, and years, but not minutes, days, or seconds? (Answer: The letter R!)

“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” — Groucho Marx

“The past is always tense, the future perfect.” — Zadie Smith

“If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.” — Toni Morrison

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies...The man who never reads lives only once.” — George R.R. Martin

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” — Nelson Mandela