17 Apr
Life is awesome, right? So is pizza, The Walking Dead, and your favourite pair of Converse shoes. The word gets tired and loses its glow with overuse. Ask Dean Winchester. So, for this Word Nerd, we came up with 9 lesser-known alternatives to awesome that you can sprinkle liberally on your conversations. We hope that […]
10 Apr
The UK has bizarre place names. We’re not just talking about the tiny Welsh town with a name 58 characters long – Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, or Pity Me – a village in Durham County. Between these two places – the first of which we doubt you’ll ever wrap your tongue around, and the second you will never […]
27 Mar
Recently, we argued that poems can be as funny as they can be serious. In this Word Nerd, we’re making the same case for insults. Add enough wit to insults and they become glorious – masterpieces which are likely to offend and impress in equal measure. And if you’re finding it hard to think of […]
22 Mar
Poetry, for most of us, is like an embarrassing aunt. The one we want to avoid at social gatherings, the one we nod at absently when she grabs us and talks nineteen to the dozen, the one we are reluctant to be seen with in public, for fear that she will bore or embarrass the […]
13 Mar
Is English a phonetic language? Yes. No. Maybe. If it was as phonetic a language as Hindi or Spanish, we would speak it just as we spell it. Instead, we have the silent k’s (knowledge, knight, kneel) and g’s (gnash, gnostic, gnome), the moody oe sound (shoes, does, goes), and the troublesome th (Thames, Thomas, […]
6 Mar
Blue moons, green thumbs & red carpets – these colourful phrases are a staple of our vocabulary. So much so that we are almost unconscious of how quirky a take on reality they are! For instance, do Prince Charles & his royal mum really have blue blood in their veins? Unless royals are octopuses in […]
1 Feb
I think it’s safe to say I travelled quite a lot in 2016. It all started in May with a trip to Australia, and only finished with November in US. Funny thing is that not one of them was ever an actual vacation. If you keep up with BrainGain magazine, you may remember that Meha […]
30 Jan
Ever wondered how a city or town gets its name? Places get their names from histories, geographies, and relentless change. For example, several Indian towns and cities have frequently changed names in order to reflect different perspectives. And in the UK, place-names are how invading armies – Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Norsemen & Vikings left their indelible […]
23 Jan
Success is a popular term. It is also a nuanced one; as much a personal definition, as a cultural construct. The word is derived from the Latin successus, which comes from the verb succedere – come close after. The question hidden in the word’s etymology then is – to come close after what? A lot […]
17 Jan
Claudia Vulliamy, an 18-year old from London, applied to study Classics at Wadham College, one of Oxford University’s 38 constituent colleges. If accepted, she would have started her course in September. But, with more than 24000 applications for approximately 3200 seats, Oxford proved a tough sell. And her application was rejected. What she did next […]