Mark Peters

You think you’ve seen every category of words … then you find this batch, including such oddities as tableclothwise and rabbitwise.

When talking about the fundament, some terms have slipped through the crack of lexical history—so please enjoy these old and enjoyable terms for the hindquarters.

Though these words sound like fiddle-faddle, they have specific uses that go beyond yada yada and twittle-twattle.

The rich history of the English language is full of similar directional words that are cool but uncommon, like ‘pancakewards,’ ‘couchward,’ and ‘pocketwards.’

Stick these terms in your cauldron and pass them around your coven.

The world is heating up, and things are often on fire—literally. As we do what we can to squelch the flames, check out some old and obscure words people of the past used when they wanted to talk about all things fire.

Back slang is kind of like a lexical puzzle that everyone from costermongers and criminals of the Victorian era to today’s Wordle fans can appreciate.

The f-word is often thought of as the most useful and flexible word in English. Whether that’s true or not, the term is so successful that it’s spawned dozens of euphemisms. Here are a few of them.