The Oxford English Dictionary tracks 600,000+ words
It adds hundreds of new words a year -- from 'doomscrolling' to 'touch grass' -- a living record of how we speak.
Today's briefing: a few timeless things worth knowing about words, language, AI, and puzzles. (Archive edition.)
It adds hundreds of new words a year -- from 'doomscrolling' to 'touch grass' -- a living record of how we speak.
It is the craft of writing clear, effective instructions for an AI model -- and it became common enough that major dictionaries now list it as a word.
Rearranging the letters of a word or name into a new one was a favorite pastime long before mobile word games.
From 'ketchup' to 'safari' to 'pajamas,' English has borrowed words from hundreds of languages around the globe.
Built on a 1979 US puzzle called Number Place, sudoku was popularized in Japan in the 1980s before sweeping the globe.
'Cleave' can mean to split apart or to cling together; such words are called contronyms, or 'Janus words.'