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Word for the Wise Archive

February 2009
Feb 2Ayn Rand
Feb 3Gertrude Stein
Feb 4People said to be dead live longer
Feb 5Robert Peel
Feb 6Revisiting carbon 14, radioactive & half-life
Feb 9Gypsy Rose
Feb 10Boris Pasternak
Feb 11The obelus & metathesis
Feb 12The theory of evolution
Feb 13Hoopla
Feb 16Presidents' Day quotes
Feb 17Maginot Line
Feb 18Wallace Stegner
Feb 20Ask not for whom the bell tolls...
Feb 23W.E.B. DuBois
Feb 24Spay & unchartered waters
Feb 25Elevate & escalate
Feb 26Obscenity, indecency, & profanity
Feb 27Word for the Wise After Dark, and a few final words
January 2009
Jan 1Humbled
Jan 2Wishy-washy
Jan 5Twelfth Night
Jan 6Carl Sandburg
Jan 7Sprachgefuhl & karmadharaya
Jan 8Empathy
Jan 9Dagwood
Jan 12Edmund Burke & Jack London
Jan 13Strive
Jan 14Caesarean
Jan 15Mores
Jan 16Growler
Jan 19Poe Toaster & poetaster
Jan 20Manner & manor
Jan 21Never mind
Jan 22George Gordon Byron
Jan 23Upper crust
Jan 26Aboriginal words
Jan 27Patron & patronize
Jan 28Good & evil
Jan 29Thomas Paine
Jan 30Pedigree
December 2008
Dec 1Prevalent
Dec 2Joseph McCarthy & terms of 1954
Dec 3Swine & pork
Dec 4Thomas Carlyle
Dec 5Begging the question
Dec 8Eli Whitney & the cotton gin
Dec 9John Milton
Dec 10Lethal
Dec 11Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Dec 12Staunch
Dec 15Bill of Rights & immunity
Dec 16Two notable women
Dec 17Carbon 14, radioactive & half-life
Dec 18Shibboleth
Dec 19Outfit & upstart
Dec 22Gorilla
Dec 23Bank
Dec 24Holy Mackerel
Dec 25A few adjectives of joy
Dec 26Smart
Dec 29Rasputin
Dec 30Mare's nest, maverick, and white man's burden
Dec 31Simon Wiesenthal & justice
November 2008
Nov 3Terms for mistakes & consequences
Nov 4Voting
Nov 5Guy
Nov 6What's good for the goose is good for the gander
Nov 7Happy medium or happy median, & compromise
Nov 10Indulgence
Nov 11Kurt Vonnegut
Nov 12Segue
Nov 13Jekyll and Hyde
Nov 14Self-conceit
Nov 17Homemade Bread Day
Nov 18Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre
Nov 19Historic & historical
Nov 20Pulchritude & whited sepulcher
Nov 21Voltaire
Nov 24Dale Carnegie
Nov 25Andrew Carnegie
Nov 26Down the rabbit hole
Nov 27Turkey terms
Nov 28Gap, notch & pass
October 2008
Oct 1Chinese terms from Chinese food
Oct 2Goose & gossamer
Oct 3Lonesome & lonely
Oct 6Dictionaries and the U.S. Supreme Court
Oct 7Duplicative & duplicate
Oct 8Carpool
Oct 9Atonement
Oct 10Double & redouble
Oct 13Words of 1925
Oct 14Peregrinate
Oct 15Patriotism & nationalism
Oct 16Dictionary Day
Oct 17Tide
Oct 20Watergate & terms of 1973
Oct 21Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Oct 22Ululate, keen & hanker
Oct 23Can & may
Oct 24Pork barrel, back scratching, & log rolling
Oct 27Theodore Roosevelt
Oct 28Colossus
Oct 29Terms for prisons and jails
Oct 30Taxonomy
Oct 31Graveyard & cemetery
September 2008
Sep 1Tarzan yell
Sep 2Flammable
Sep 3Tabloid
Sep 4Atlanta
Sep 5Stuck-up
Sep 8International Literacy Day
Sep 9Mao Ze Dong & the long march
Sep 10Crisp & crispy
Sep 11O. Henry
Sep 12Regardless, irregardless, & nevertheless
Sep 15Terms from American Spanish
Sep 16Torquemada & inquisition
Sep 17Lazy Susan & dumbwaiter
Sep 18Let alone
Sep 19Entomology & etymology
Sep 22Palooka
Sep 23Terms for "stupid people"
Sep 24Punctuation terms
Sep 25Peruse
Sep 26English
Sep 29Enrico Fermi
Sep 30Boilerplate
August 2008
Aug 1In fact & indeed
Aug 4Picnic
Aug 5Astrology & astronomy
Aug 6Streak & rationalize
Aug 7Terms of 1959
Aug 8Muggy
Aug 11President pro tempore
Aug 12Terms & the general lexicon
Aug 13Hitchcockian & MacGuffin
Aug 14Chockfull, chock, & chockablock
Aug 15Whippersnapper
Aug 18Terms of retail
Aug 19Philo T. Farnsworth & Bart Simpson
Aug 20Mariner
Aug 21Hearsay & res getae
Aug 22Toe the line & jury-rig
Aug 25Some words about human kindness
Aug 26Sex & gender
Aug 27Cattycorner
Aug 28Roger Tory Peterson
Aug 29Kidnap
July 2008
Jul 1Dominion
Jul 2Smithereens
Jul 3Hysteria & effete
Jul 4Terms born in America
Jul 7Wiki
Jul 8Glass houses & glass ceiling
Jul 9Cure & curiosity
Jul 10Marcel Proust
Jul 11Martinet
Jul 14Woody Guthrie
Jul 15Terms born in baby talk
Jul 16Ida B. Wells
Jul 17Iron & irony
Jul 18Piece
Jul 22Gregor Mendel
Jul 23Private eye
Jul 24Cobwebs & spider webs
Jul 25Near miss
Jul 28Bonus Army
Jul 29Spendthrift
Jul 30Tinker's dam
Jul 31Shadow
June 2008
Jun 2Saint Elmo's fire
Jun 3Standing out from the herd
Jun 4National Tailors' Day
Jun 5John Maynard Keynes
Jun 6Afraid
Jun 9Schadenfreude revisited
Jun 10Terms of 1652
Jun 11Ben Jonson
Jun 12Perfect and more perfect
Jun 13Could & couldn't care less
Jun 16Abraham Lincoln
Jun 17E-mail queries
Jun 18Hawks, doves, & the War of 1812
Jun 19Chatty
Jun 20Master of ceremonies & toast
Jun 23An improved type-writer
Jun 24Rhubarb
Jun 25Mildred Gillars
Jun 26Anarchists
Jun 27Upset & factoid
Jun 30They
May 2008
May 1Terms of the ear
May 2Robert's Rules & rules of apostrophes
May 5Nellie
May 6Sigmund Freud
May 7Freebie & swag
May 8Nonchalance
May 9Where books are burned
May 12Roadometer & odometer
May 13The exactly right word
May 14Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit
May 15Nylon
May 16Rhubarb
May 19Terms of decapitation
May 20Terms of aviation history
May 21The flip side
May 22Arthur Conan Doyle
May 23Corduroy & corduroy road
May 26Terms of the dead
May 27Shamus
May 28Swan song
May 29Much
May 30Gilding the lily
April 2008
Apr 1James Boswell
Apr 2Emile Zola
Apr 3Space
Apr 4The @
Apr 7Walter Winchell
Apr 8Superior
Apr 9Daffynitions
Apr 10Quixotic
Apr 11The Civil Rights Act, & terms of 1968
Apr 14Samuel Mudd
Apr 15Henry James
Apr 16Bunting
Apr 17Thornton Wilder
Apr 18Digerati & digeratus
Apr 21Charlotte Bronte
Apr 22Chemists Celebrate Earth Day
Apr 23The death dates of two great writers
Apr 24Cygnet & swan
Apr 25Serendipity
Apr 28Circadian & nycthemeral
Apr 29World Dance Day
Apr 30Fray & affray