lemma

Malapropisms: The Linguistics of the Wrong Word

Named after the character Mrs. Malaprop from a 1775 play, malapropisms are linguistic errors where a speaker substitutes a correct-sounding…

5 days ago

Hapax Legomenon: The Mystery of Unique Words

What happens when a word appears only once in the entire written history of a language? These unique occurrences, known…

5 days ago

Polysemy vs. Homonymy: One Word, Many Meanings?

While "Bank" (river) and "Bank" (money) sound identical by pure historical accident, "Foot" (body) and "Foot" (mountain) share a deep…

1 week ago

Autohyponymy: The Word Inside

Can a word be a specific type of itself? This article introduces autohyponymy, a fascinating linguistic quirk where words like…

2 months ago

20 German Verbs That Look Like English, But Aren’t

Be careful! Many German verbs look just like English ones but have wildly different meanings, leading to hilarious and embarrassing…

3 months ago

The Word on the Tip of Your Tongue

We all know the maddening feeling of a word stuck on the tip of our tongue. This universal frustration isn't…

6 months ago

This website uses cookies.