WUUU! It's a new Words Unravelled! This time, @robwords.com and I practically go dada over art supplies, movements, techniques, and even rare Crayon colors. 🎨 Watch on YouTube or listen anywhere you pod your casts. ▶️ www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xi1... 🎧 audioboom.com/channels/512...

I am pinching myself because it feels like a dream that I was able to coauthor a book with my friend Shannon Miller! I had worked with Media Lab to contribute to another book, so when they asked me to author a delightfully dizzyingly titled factlet (IYKYK) compendium… well, obviously I had to.

Fable’s favorite Ms. Rachel episode

My power and water have been out for 24 hours, and it looks like it’ll be 48 hours, but at least the Mexican restaurant across the lake has a generator and the match on.

Hey Jess following on from your “ cool” episode have you & Rob come across this wonderful LP, late Beat period ….even has a dictionary ….some of the audio is up on YouTube and you can buy it I Think on iTunes.My OG LP even has a hip dictionary to help you converse with other hipsters

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Hell yes it is! IN FACT: drop some book recs in the thread, y'all. The more recently published, the better. Authors, don't be afraid to tell people about your latest book, either. In fact, you totally should. Do it! Do it now!

Authors beware: I keep getting emails from online “book clubs” that want me to pay for my books to be their featured reads. I’d hope this would be obvious, but don’t do pay-to-play promotions like this. They are always scams. A few ways to identify them:

The ‘dog days’ of summer get their name due to their association with the Dog Star, Sirius, found in the constellation Canis Major. The first visible rising of Sirius occurs during the hot stretch from early July to early September. Woof.

There's always at least ONE priceless gem of new information in each WU installment for me. Today's? Learning that the Men At Work "Down Under" line "🎶where the women glow & men chunder" (meaning puke) derives from an oblique rhyming slang reference to "spew" from "Chunder Loo." THIS is Chunder Loo.

New Words Unravelled! My mic decided not to show up to the program, but @robwords.com and I still sling some slang and have a fine old time. Give us our propers and take a peek: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HuQ...

Please inspect this beeautiful insect. I think I may have reached the apiex of my bee photential with this one.

Bought a big new dog bed for my biggest dog. It was received as expected.

My dad has been struggling for a few years with an awful autoimmune disease that’s similar to lupus with some extra fuck-you features, and it sucks ass, but he’s on some drugs that are (slowwwly) helping. Recently he discovered one of the side effects is that his bald patch has filled in a bit. 😅

Yay! They're back! *True friends* @robwords.com & @jesszafarris.com talk about linguistic "false friends," and a certain double entendre... comes in handy. (pun intended) As always, these two together are a delight.

And we're back! The latest season (or series, if you prefer) of Words Unravelled has begun. In this episode: Words like empathy, magazine, and casino mean different things in other languages. @robwords.com and I discuss false friends and false cognates: www.youtube.com/watch?v=XA4d...

Another absolute top tier 'Blusher' from @robwords.com on this episode of Words Unravelled with @jesszafarris.com youtu.be/XA4d9r6Yu5A

Can someone who knows something about neuroscience tell me whether the arbor vitae in the brain is pronounced like the arborvitae tree/shrub (arbor VY-tee) or as arbor vee-TAY?

Th word "shelter" is often said to be from the Middle English sheldtrume (Old English scyldtruma), literally "shield-troop," originally referring to a group of soldiers protected by interlocking shields. (The OED doesn't like the "troop" explanation but does support "shield" as the first element.)

I hope this joke isn’t too schaddy. #jokes #comedy #funny #schadenfreude #standupcomedy

Without looking it up, I challenge you to guess the date of the first attested use of the term “g-string.”

It's wild how Parks & Rec started out as Bad Bureaucracy Satire but through today's lens it's done a total 180 and turned into Healthy Bureaucracy Porn

Old man Ranger still has the best puppy smile

We don't deserve stuff this good. Give it a watch.

Loooove the paperback cover of Useless Etymology! 😍

An incomplete collection of words that mean or involve a root meaning "lump": beignet blister brisket bun bunch chump cleat clod clog clot clout clown crop dollop dot dumpling gall gob group hob hub hump hunk klutz lob lunch lunk mass mitochondria node/ule nugget pudding thrombosis trend tuber

Look at those otter toe beans! 10/10

Fable and Obi's first river day!

Why is this wasp carrying a (hopefully dead) caterpillar around? Do they eat caterpillars?

Guess who's getting back into adjuncting! I'll be teaching virtually in the University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications this fall.

it's bananas how frequently people want me to absolve them of social consequences for using language that's widely considered offensive like sorry Ted, writing books about words doesn't qualify me to decide how other people feel about your decision to continue saying racist/ableist/sexist shit

mood after writing an article on the origin of "mogging"

When Obi finds a particularly good stick in the yard, he brings it up to his cot on the patio. My favorite part of this habit is that his Interesting Stick collection is actually composed of unusually interesting sticks.

Anyone know why the BookScan Weekly Sales report in Author Central only goes back two years? I want ALL the numbers, and I know my kids' book in particular sold well over 20K copies before this range.

Fable and Obi got their first-ever pup cups!

@jesszafarris.com!!! #Wishbone

RIP Marjane Satrapi. What a legend. Persepolis altered my understanding of the world and should be required reading for everyone.

The lead-up to this quote is also important: "Language evolution, it turns out, loves a mouth that isn't afraid to let it all hang out. And snooty talkers tend to be a bit too linguistically uptight. … Rising social-class affiliation seems to make us more guarded and regulatory about how we talk."

In his live show, @robwords.com talks about words that have been skunked, i.e., words definitions have become ambiguous or have multiple interpretations because of their usage. An interesting and relatively recent one is the use of "POV" in short-form videos. It's often used on videos that aren't …

"You speak more Spanish than you think" | Words used in English that originate in Spanish from @robwords.com and @jesszafarris.com #language #etymology www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrKG...

Oh I like this question! My immediate thought (because of the prompt) is "blandish" and "blemish," but also, "askance" is an adverb that looks like a noun and "contumely" is a noun that looks like an adverb. The biggest category here is -ly adjectives: scholarly, cowardly, etc. This needs a name.

I just finished The Boys, and I do think its magnum hamfistedness was necessary, and I think it did it well. Already an Eric Kripke fan, loved the fanservice, and yes, message received and grimly appreciated. But I think some of it was better accomplished by Dr. Horrible in a fraction of the time.

Hello, please show me your pets and tell me how they got their name. Here are two of mine: Obi and Fable, respectively named after Star Wars and Aesop-like storytelling.

Motion for the Democratic Party to brand a universal healthcare bill with a stupid but cinematic and Murica-coded name like the Patriot Survival Act or the Stars & Stripes Don't Bleed Act or the Revolution for Life Act. Freedom to Live Act. War on Death Act. This shit writes itself.

I’m working on a sports-related project soon. Who are some great sports reporters I should follow who are especially strong on the human/storytelling aspect of their coverage?

Found my first-ever morel!

I know he belches 4,000 gallons of bullshit per hour, but I'm especially cheesed off over Mike Johnson claiming that "Christian nationalism" is a "new" coinage. It's 109 years old, first recorded by the Missionary Education Movement of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America.

I beg your finest pardon, I only do that with my husb—oh you mean the word origin. The Latin iuxta means “beside” or “close to,” so it’s “positioned beside,” first found in 17th-century religious writings. It didn’t fully earn its contrasty sense until literary analysis got ahold of it.

I wish I could erase the book Jurassic Park from my head so I could experience it for the first time again Not the movie, though, I like the nostalgia twingles it gives me

A tweet from 5 years ago, when Twitter was only MOSTLY evil. I have to retire this joke because I learned the actual phrase origin on WORDS UNRAVELED, w/ @jesszafarris.com