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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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

In this Word Nerd, we are talking about balls, because, apparently, we talk about balls a lot! And not just in the context of sports. It is a common metaphor in politics, business, or any kind of conversation. Not surprising, given that humans have been preoccupied with balls for millennia. There are handball drawings on […]

Oxford’s libraries are among the most celebrated in the world for their incomparable collections of books and manuscripts. The main research library which lends the entire group its name is the Bodleian Library. The group includes research libraries, faculty libraries, as well as those attached to the departments and other institutions of the University, and […]

Winter is not only coming, it is well & truly here. If not in the Game of Thrones, at least in the northern hemisphere. For Monsoon, we did a piece on how weather is a great source of creative inspiration in literature. So, for this week’s Word Nerd, we will look at 6 idiomatic phrases […]

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. […]