Word History: Today's Good Word was borrowed from Old French regreter "lament someone's death", made up of re-, an intensive prefix, + -greter, a mysterious verb etymologists have been unable to trace. Their best guess is that Old French borrowed an Old Germanic word *gretan "to weep...

3.5 years later, I'll have a crack at this one. I don't believe there is really any confusion here. Both words are from the same root, but with slightly different development. If you are patient, you have patience. The former an adjective, the latter a noun. If you are a patient, you are a noun putt...

Here's the Dr.'s treatment: http://www.alphadictionary.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2646

That's a lode off.

Audiendus, I'm puzzled by your puzzlement here. Doesn't the phrase work in both directions?

I tend to apply this to the purchase of fancy wines. If you're buying an "investment" bottle, you have the wine, but you can't drink it. Would that not be the same with cake?

someone misinterpreted Canarias as canary, so English speakers have to puzzle over where all the canaries on the Canary Islands have gone. Wikipedia disagrees. It states that the canary was named after the Canary Islands (Canarias = of the dogs), and is endemic to them. In other words, canaries are...

Can "wimp" be used for females? I don't believe I've ever seen it used so.

These are neat! My brother used to have one. I've even seen a movie about them. They can produce some very nice sounds.

Here's Wikipedia's article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theramin

It has a short sample, but I'm sure others can be found with a little effort. Go for it!

Before you take your pet to the doctor, make sure you've vetted your veterinarian.

Thus, when protesting the draft, people were calling for the proscription of conscription.

A good suggestion, and one that hasn't been taken up as yet. Perhaps we'll see it sometime soon.

"The new office interns were so intemerate it seemed a shame to have to initiate them into the real world. A dirty job, but someone's got to do it, I suppose."

"The president of the oil plant wore a ring with an iridescent gemstone that matched perfectly the colors in the film of oil on the surface of the creek that ran by the plant." A good word to apply to the BP oil disaster in the Gulf this year. Does anyone out there think this word could b...

Dictionary.com includes "potter" in its definition, which I find odd. Potter means to fuss about lazily, doing little things here and there more or less aimlessly. It's also known as putter.

2010 CONTEST RESULTS For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss--a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest ge...

Lots of people put an "a" in my handle, but I spell it the way it is because there are days when I don't know if I'm missing an "a" or two "e's."

Might this also hark back to olden days, when names could be only eight letters or digits long?

We also have Weakly Interacting Massive Particles to consider.