Headline in The Guardian Feb 26, 2020
Core blimey: how a 62-year-old man planked for eight hours – and what he can teach us
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyl ... rld-record

I searched lots of books using the ngram viewer and found only one non-biological use of "crepitation": "The waves began to be stilled by the large snow-flakes that fell unmelted on their surface; and, as the breeze died away into a murmur, a low crepitation, like the clicking of a death-watch, anno...

From etymonline.com, the Online Etymology Dictionary. (Note this source disagrees with the Roman Lupercalia connection mentioned by the good doctor Goodword.) mid-15c., "sweetheart chosen on St. Valentine's Day," from Late Latin Valentinus, the name of two early Italian saints (from Latin valentia "...

I find it interesting that a simple change in word order (syntax) changes the meaning (semantics). Are there other examples in Greek? Are these changes predictable? Are there similar examples in English?

I don't consider abseiling fun; it's down right dangerous. To make your metaphor a bit more apropos, I'd say it's like abseiling down the climate cliff in the dark without bothering to tie the ends of the rope together.

Risible has been done, most recently in 2015
https://www.alphadictionary.com/goodword/word/risible

From the Online Etymology Dictionary that is linked to this site bunk (n.1) 1758, "sleeping-berth in a vessel," later in a railroad car, etc., probably a shortened form of bunker (n.) in its sense of "seat." Bunk-bed (n.) attested by 1869. Thus, the "bunk" that Dr Goodword chose to address this time...

Actually, it is the term British (and some British Commonwealth) climbers/mountaineers use instead of the French "rappel" that North American climbers tend to use. It describes a method for descending a rope secured to an anchor at a high point by wrapping the rope around something that creates fric...

If one is speaking Cockney, does "berk" rhyme with "quirk" or "quark"? As pointed out in the discussion of "burke," the first syllable of "Berkeley Hunt" in a British pronunciation rhymes with "quark" or "park" or "bark" or "arc." If, in British pronunciation, "berk" rhymes with "quirk" and not "qua...

Damoge, I'm no expert on Cockney rhyming slang, but I think sometimes it works like this: First you have the word being avoided Then you have a short phrase (usually two words, like "Berkeley hunt"?) the second of which rhymes with the intended word. Then the slang term becomes the first word or a c...

The stone is a unit of mass in the Imperial System of Weights & Measures and was standardized at 14 lbs. (6.35 kg) in 1835. Although use of the stone in commerce was banned in 1985, it has persisted as a customary measure of body weight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit)

Time to bring this Goodword back again. Jimmy Kimmel when out on the street to see how some Angelenos define it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT8ZIP4zPx4 (The relevant section starts at 5:03 if you don't want to watch the whole clip.) Slava's post above (Oct 15, 2012) combined with the current De...

To Mr Kovac, would you please post a link to the NYTimes article to which you referred? I am interested in the this second person singular pronoun problem. Please see my post under Res Diversae last July
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9760
requesting help.

Agreed. When my daughter was small and we were out and about, she would sometimes ask me to carry something for her because she was tired or needed her hands free for some other purpose. And on more than one occasion, someone exclaim "What a cute hand bag!" To which I felt the best response was to a...

Interesting that the modern English word "kaput" meaning "defeated, destroyed, broken" and generally thought to be taken from German also traces (and preserves) its etymology back to this same PIE root.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/kaput