Words & Stuff

Psephology is an old-fashioned term for "the statistical study of elections," according to Wikipedia, which notes that the term was "coined (from the Greek psephos, 'pebble', which the Greeks used...

In the roleplaying game Paranoia, a character could have a mutant power called "machine empathy," which caused machines (including computers) to like the character. Apparently in comic books these days,...

A submission recently used the phrase "pashing off"; from context, it was clearly Australian slang for something in the general vicinity of either kissing or making out. WordWeb Online says...

I just learned that the process of going metric is called metrication. Also, that there's a traditional Chinese unit of time, the ke, which was traditionally equal to 1/100 of...

I was familiar with the katana (the long Japanese sword used by samurai) and the wakizashi (the shorter second sword also used by samurai), but I was previously unaware of...

Every so often I just stop posting here. I'm not sure why; I continue to see new words, I just go a few days without posting one and then I've...

No, "adularescence" isn't the stage between adolescence and adulthood; it's "[w]hen a gem displays a billowy floating light which appears to come from below the surface," according to the Optical...

My favorite new word from recent weeks is "moulage." MW11 has a relatively staid definition: "an impression or cast made for use especially as evidence in a criminal investigation." But...

According to James Clavell's Shogun, "[a] rutter was a small black book [used for ocean navigation] containing the detailed observation of a pilot who had been there before." Such a...

According to Wikipedia, "spaewife [...] is a Scottish term for a fortune-telling woman." It adds: "'Spae' is derived from the Old Norse 'spá,' meaning prophesy." MW3 suggests that synonyms include...