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 […]
19 Dec
The human body fascinates all of us endlessly. It’s front and center – on magazine covers, in poetry and medical journals, in cultural debates and literary criticism, in rites and experiments. There are ways in which we talk about it, ways in which we should talk about it, and ways in which we never should. […]
28 Nov
“I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English.” Saki, The Chronicles of Clovis In an earlier Word Nerd, we’ve discussed how accents divide us even when we speak a common language. Today, we want to talk about how idioms and […]
31 Oct
One of the most historically significant elections of our lifetime is coming up on November 8 in the US. Unfortunately, each presidential election seems longer and more absurd than the last, resulting in trivialized campaigns riddled with half-truths and lies, and a bitterly divided electorate. Developing new shorthand for all kinds of absurdities seems to […]
10 Oct
Recently, the Tamil word ‘aiyoh’ was added to the Oxford English Dictionary. It is unclear who might want to look up ‘aiyoh’ in an English dictionary. But anyway, the question is: how can a dictionary define exclamations like these? Here are a few from India and around the world that are hard to explain. Take […]