A great word coined by NY Times crossword puzzle editor Wil Shortz to describe his own job. He also gave us enigmatology for the study of puzzles, which was his major at Indiana University, part of their “design your own major” program. He’s definitely a member of the Word Nerd Hall of Fame
Anyone who played the roleplaying game Werewolf: The Apocalypse in the 90's will probably remember garou as the term used as an endonym among the werewolves.
Trending today on etymology online: hagiolatry (n.) "worship of saints," 1798, from hagio- + -latry "worship of." ... Greek hagios "sacred, devoted to the gods" (of things), "holy, pure" (of persons)
I know enough French to recognise loup as wolf, but this got me wondering what garou means. I looked it up and found this at WordSense: Garou is the French equivalent of were. An example from the site is lapin-garou which means were‐rabbit. But what I find really interesting is that garou came from werwolf, which meant man-wolf (the old version of man which included woman and children), so loup-garou comes from wolf-man-wolf, and lapin-garou would be rabbit-man-wolf.
Janus word: a word (such as cleave, or sanction) having opposite or contradictory meanings depending on the context in which the word is used.
Ooh, groovy. I’ve heard them called contronyms, but I always dig a good mythological reference. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/57032/25-words-are-their-own-opposites
Googol noun A number written as the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros. It’s systematic name is 10 duotrigintillion.
Indeed it is. There are multiple names for very large numbers.. but that one’s probably trending because it’s a marketing tactic and the website’s obviously aspiring to get itself a certain amount of searches
Not a word, but I learned the phrase "nullus testis" recently. It was in an article about rape prosecutions. Until I read the article itself, I misunderstood the phrase. I thought it might have been a Roman punishment.
