[Article] WHO IS THE GENIUS BEHIND MERRIAM-WEBSTER’S SOCIAL MEDIA? – IN CONVERSATION WITH A DICTIONARY

In case you hadn’t noticed, Merriam-Webster’s Twitter game is strong—topical, funny, smart, and informative while also being relentlessly irreverent. Not what you’d necessarily expect from the social media account of a dictionary. (This is putting aside the fact that we now generally expect things like dictionaries to have social media accounts, of course.) But if you were ever a nerd who thought of the dictionary as your best friend (just me?)—well, this is sort of like that dictionary has finally come to life and loves you back and also tweets about words all…

[Article] Family Language

By Ralph Keyes When asked how he felt about being appointed Vice-President of Britain’s Board of Trade in 1841, William Gladstone responded, “Bathing feel.” Say what? Bathing feel turned out to be an expression used by members of his wife’s family to describe an antsy sense of anticipation when undertaking a formidable task, much like a baby about to be plunged into bath water. The family of Mrs. Gladstone, Catherine Glynne, had so many idiosyncratic words and expressions like this that in 1851, Lord Lyttleton—the husband of Catherine’s sister Mary—published…