Word Smarts

  We all have our favorite emojis, whether it’s a Heart ❤️, a Hand 👋, or something new every day. (The Melting Face 🫠 is easily my top emoji of the summer.) The options are plentiful — there are at least 3,790 official emojis in the Unicode Standard — but we can think of thousands more we wish we had. Who among us hasn’t searched for a specific image to punctuate a text, only to discover it doesn’t exist?  Word Smarts writers put together a list of  emojis we’d like to add to our keyboards , including an acoustic guitar and a dumpster fire. But we still wanted more, so we asked our readers for suggestions on what emojis they would add to their library.  Emojis are  created by a global nonprofit  called the Unicode Consortium. They added  eight new emojis  in April 2025, including a Leafless Tree 🪾 and a Fingerprint 🫆. Anyone can submit an emoji proposal, so if you’re feeling inspired, Unicode starts accepting emoji proposals again on Apri...

  Typing “irregardless” into a Word document generates a red squiggly line beneath it that signifies something is wrong; perhaps the word is misspelled or it’s not a word at all. However,  Merriam-Webster dictionary  says this North American colloquialism is, in fact, a word — just one that is “nonstandard.” “The most frequently repeated remark about it is that ‘there is no such word,’” the  dictionary entry  explains. “There is such a word, however.” All the Words Fit To Print The question of  whether “irregardless” is really a word  has received more attention in recent years, but the legitimacy of the word was established in the early 20th century. The Oxford English Dictionary cites its appearance in the 1912 edition of the  American Dialect Dictionary , but its origins go even further back, with the possible  earliest printed appearance  of the word found in 1795. A poem called “The Old Woman and Her Tabby,” published in the  C...

  Cursive, less technically known as “joined-up writing,” is any style of penmanship in which characters are written in a flowing manner without breaks in between. In theory, this makes writing faster and, when well executed, more aesthetically pleasing, particularly in contrast to block letters. In  France , children start learning to write in cursive as early as kindergarten, where they learn a specific style of handwriting known as French cursive.  French cursive has its own unique characteristics that make it instantly recognizable, at least to anyone familiar with European penmanship traditions. It  comes from  the French  ronde  (“round”) script, which was meant to lend the characters a round look when taken together. This script appeared in France at the end of the 16th century and was taught in French schools until the 20th century. French cursive, which maintains some of the loops and flourishes of the earlier  ronde , was later standardi...

  The concept of doing business back in the Middle Ages is difficult for the modern mind to comprehend. They didn’t accept Apple Pay, credit cards were still centuries away, and merchants were likely to charge you amounts such as “twelfty.” This odd-sounding term comes from the Old English “ hundtwelftig ,” meaning “20 past 100.” In other words, it’s how folks in the Middle Ages referred to the number 120. While the English-speaking world primarily uses a base-10 counting system today, there was a time when early Germanic peoples used base-12. This put emphasis on multiples of 12 such as 120, 1,200, and so on. In a 1993  academic paper , historian Julian Goodare explains how “twelfty” was predominantly used from the early Middle Ages through the middle of the 17th century. It was part of the  duodecimal  system in which people counted by 12s rather than 10s. Goodare adds that “twelfty” was also referred to as the “long hundred” (compared to 100, which was called the ...

  Emojis — those ubiquitous icons used in texts, emails, and social media to indicate mood, the weather, interests, and even relationship status — have been around since  1997 . In the decades since, the little pictures have gained a foothold in our increasingly tech-reliant lives. When communication occurs digitally, a small character (or a string of them) can add nuance and context in a way that a lengthy block of text cannot. Much in the same way slang terms evolve with each new generation, however, the meanings of emojis have changed since the first pixelated set was introduced almost three decades ago. Often, the intended meaning of an icon is all but forgotten as users put their own spin on it. And as lexicographers can attest, the meaning of a word (or an emoji) only works if that is how people are using it. Here are some of the most commonly used emojis and what they mean — at least for now. 🔥 Fire The flame emoji can represent a real fire, but it’s more frequently us...

  The word “portmanteau” was created long ago for a large travel trunk capable of opening into two equal parts. It wasn’t until 1871 that the term was repurposed by Lewis Carroll, author of  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  Carroll’s version of a portmanteau was  “a word that blends together the sounds and meanings of two other words” — which is the primary usage today. If you’ve ever asked someone to brunch or checked into a motel, you’ve used one of these mashups. Here are a few of the most common portmanteaus that English speakers use regularly. Brunch This portmanteau combines the words “breakfast” and “lunch” in a delectable combination that denotes the meal that occurs in late morning or early afternoon — usually on weekends, sometimes including alcohol. Brunch menus tend to include both traditional breakfast and lunch fare, as the culinary lines are a bit more blurred than at other meals.  The earliest use of “brunch” dates to the late 19th century. An ...

  Some porcine-related phrases make clear sense, such as “pigging out” or “happy as a pig in mud.” Pigs also have a reputation for excessive perspiration, given the popularity of the phrase “I’m sweating like a pig!” However, this seems to be just bad press. According to  4-H Agent Matthew Newman , while swine do have some sweat glands, as all mammals do, they have relatively few for their size. As such, they have to roll in the mud or do another similar activity to cool their bodies on a hot day. So, where did “sweating like a pig” come from? The idiom actually has to do not with the animal but with the process of iron smelting. More specifically, it comes from the term “pig iron.” “ Pig iron ,” going back to 1665, refers to the “crude iron that is the direct product of the blast furnace.” It’s known as “pig iron” because of the way iron used to be cast. Hot iron was poured into sand molds in a way that visually resembled tiny piglets suckling at their mother’s teat. When the...

  English may be a shared language, but American and British speakers often diverge in the words and expressions they use.  And while many of their idioms share the same meaning, some vary in their wording. While these idiom pairs are historically connected, they’ve evolved to fit the everyday language of their respective regions. Some differences are subtle, while others are more pronounced, reflecting cultural differences on either side of the Atlantic. American: Toot One’s Own Horn British: Blow One’s Own Trumpet Depending on where they live, English speakers refer to  different  instruments when boasting about themselves. To “toot your own horn” in  American English  is the equivalent of “blowing your own trumpet” in  British English . Both expressions describe talking about oneself in a prideful way, though often in a self-aware manner. In essence, you’re giving yourself credit for being right about something or having accomplished something impre...