Long before English speakers adopted the suffix –orama, as in Scoutorama and smell-o-rama, there was French word panorama referring to “a great display or spectacle.” Panorama comes from Greek words that mean “whole view...
Starting today, the Double-Tongued Dictionary is now a part of A Way with Words! That means that more than 18,000 dictionary records are now at home here and searchable from the top of every page. These are undocumented or under-documented words...
Did President Warren G. Harding coin the term normalcy in his famous Return to Normalcy speech? Turns out the word normalcy was already in use before Harding made it famous. Its synonym, normality, is generally the preferred term. Harding is also...
polebrity n.— «Pretty soon, we will all probably start to complain that Obama is a man of straw, a media creation, a triumph of style over substance; more a celebrity than a politician—a “polebrity” to use the latest ugly...
knobology n.— «Students take readily to the computerized training. Byron Hull, who manages training for the Air Route Traffic Control Centers, refers to the computer savvy of the new recruits as “knobology,” a neologism that describes the...
stiny adj.— «The display screen is micro madness—so small, so tiny, it has inspired the neologism “stiny.”» —“Titan-ic underdog – Car MP3 player drownsout brand-name humdrum” by Payton H...