Author: Arika

Most of our feathered friends can sing, but only a few can talk. And if those talkers witness something naughty, they might just tell on you.

1. SUSPICIOUS SWEET TALKING

A woman in Kuwait, where adultery is illegal, had been suspicious for some time that her husband was carrying on an affair with their housekeeper. There were little signs, like when she returned home from work early and noticed that he seemed nervous. But it was when the family parrot squawked unfamiliar sweet nothings that she decided to take her suspicions to the police. If her husband wasn’t saying those things to her, how was the parrot learning them? However, because it could not be proven that the parrot hadn’t heard the phrases from a steamy TV show, the bird’s evidence was deemed inadmissible.

2. THAT’S NOT MY NAME

In another case of infidelity revealed with a squawk, a man was surprised to hear his beloved African Grey parrot Ziggy say, “Hiya Gary!” when his live-in girlfriend’s phone rang, because his name was not Gary. After he heard the parrot say, “I love you, Gary,” and make kissing sounds when the name Gary was said on TV, he confronted his girlfriend, who admitted she was having an affair with Gary. Not only did he lose his girlfriend, but when the parrot continued to chatter on about Gary in her voice, the man was forced to give his pet up too.

3. THE AWFUL LAST LAUGH

Even when other evidence is already damning, a parrot can add an extra sinister twist to a crime investigation. When an elderly woman was found in a filthy South Carolina home, covered in bedsores and near death, her daughter was charged with elder abuse and neglect (her mother died the next day). The police noted that a parrot in the house repeatedly cried for help and then laughed. They believe it was mimicking the interaction between the mother and daughter: The mother pleading for help and the daughter laughing.

4. REPLAYING THE LAST WORDS

After a Michigan man was found shot to death in his home, his parrot kept repeating a dialogue, alternating between a man and woman’s voice, that went: “Get out.” “Where will I go?” “Don’t f***ing shoot!” His wife—who police believe tried to kill herself but did not succeed—was charged with his murder, but it remains to be seen whether the parrot’s account of events will be admissible in court.

5. GIVING THE CRIMINAL AWAY

Tales of parrots giving the criminal away go back to the 19th century, when the leader of a Paris crime syndicate who went by Victor Chevalier escaped with his beloved parrot from the residence he shared with his wife Marie before the cops descended on him. When an officer was called to another residence for a seemingly unrelated search, he heard as he walked in, a parrot cry out “Totor! Riri!” which happened to be the pet names of Victor and Marie. The discovery of the parrot eventually led to the capture of Victor.

It’s Movember, the month when normally naked upper lips get covered with mustaches that range from pleasant to preposterous. For many, it’s unnecessary to grow a ‘stache, since the beard is a popular (non?)grooming choice, and few beards are unaccompanied by a sweet ‘stache. In recognition of seasonal and year-long fascination with facial hair, here are some older terms for the non-clean-shaven.

1. AND 2. BARBATULOUS AND BEARDLET

The very rare term barbatulous—a relative of barber—sounds like variation of barbarous, but it describes a quality that, traditionally, would not fit the barbarian lifestyle: having a teeny-weeny beard. This term dates from at least 1600, and since the early 1990s, beardolosists have called such itty-bitty growths beardlets. Oxford English Dictionary examples of the term in use are fairly hilarious, including a 1928 example from the Daily Express describing “The beardlet adorning the under-lip of Lord Bertie of Thame.”

3. IMBERBIC

If you’re imberbic, you don’t even have a beardlet. You’re totally beardless, you naked-faced monster. This extremely obscure word popped up in the early 1600s.

4. CAT-SMELLERS

Since cats use their whiskers to whiff, some have taken to calling whiskers, especially a stache, cat-smellers. This term popped up in the mid-1800s and deserves a revival.

5. TAZ

Though this term brings to mind unholy beasts such as the Tasmanian devil, it’s only a variation of some more common words: tash and stache, which have long been abbreviations of mustache. As Green’s Dictionary of Slang (GDoS) shows, taz is versatile enough to not only mean a mustache, as it’s sometimes referred to a beard or the peach fuzz of a whippersnapper.

6., 7., 8., AND 9. FACE FUNGUS, FACE LACE, FACE FUR, AND FACE PRICKLE

Facial hair has rarely been in vogue as it is now, and that lack of vogueness can be seen in insults such as face fungus, which have been spotted since the early 1900s. If using this term for someone’s beard and/or mustache isn’t enough, you can also use it as a nickname and/or insult, such as, “Hey! Face fungus!” Far more gentle and complimentary terms include face lace, face fur, and face prickle.

10. FACE FINS

Here’s a mustache-centric term along the same lines. First spotted in the 1980s, this term implies a protruding, monstrous stache more likely to be seen on a contemporary hipster or 1920s movie villain. Fellows with face fins take the mustache to its most extravagant extreme.

11. TOPIARIZE

Related to the word topiary, this recent but still under-the-radar word refers to trimming a beard and/or mustache in a manner that could be considered artsy-fartsy or fancy-shmancy. Paul McFedries’s wonderful Word Spy site records the first use in a 1993 article in The Independent that describes Sean Connery: “… his beard topiarised to a silvery point, bonds Bondishly with Snipes—gunpowder-dry gags and plenty of oneupmanship—but they never quite spark, leaving the film’s Eastern promise unfulfilled.” McFedries also documents a wonderful variation by Douglas Walker in 2015 on Twitter: “Auto-topiarising your beard is difficult for the partially sighted man.”

12. BEARDIE WEIRDIE

This disturbingly rhyming term has been around since the 1960s, according to GDoS. It originally referred to a fellow looked upon as a bookish egghead or radical rabble-rouser.

13. JUST AS I FEARED

Jonathan Green suggests this example of rhyming slang may have spawned from an 1846 Edward Lear limerick, which goes like so: “There was an old man with a beard / Who said ‘It is just as I feared!’ Two owls and a hen / Four larks and a wren / Have all built their nests in my beard.” Hate when that happens.

14. AND 15. POGONOTOMY AND POGONOTROPHY

These terms are blends of Greek and English, and despite the fancy sound, they have dirt-simple meanings. Pogonotomy simply refers to shaving, while pogonotrophy is the opposite: allowing a beard to flourish on the facial stage. A 1996 use from the Daily Mail shows how fickle the public can be when judging face fuzz: “This week’s picture of Beatle George Harrison wearing a moustache—and a particularly sad, droopy looking one at that—caught students of pogonotrophy the world over in two minds.”

Disrespect or respect? Exclusion or inclusion? These Deaf kids don’t see themselves as having a problem that needs to be fixed. They are asking to be seen by others the way they see themselves, as an asset to a diverse community and as equals. This video, produced for the Kickstarter Election Issues project, lets them speak for themselves in their own language. Learn the signs for oppression and justice, open-minded and close-minded, and other important concepts in the fight for Deaf equality.

On Halloween, witches and werewolves, ghosts and ghouls, and demons and devils stalk the streets for tricks or treats. But the real tricks and treats—at least for the horror-loving word nerds among us—might just be the strange and far-flung origins of these monster names.

1. WITCH

The word witch flies in from Old English. The earliest record, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), refers to a male practitioner of sorcery and magic—wicca, also the source of the neopagan religion of the same name. Wicca is derived from wiccian, “to practice witchcraft.” The deeper roots of this verb are obscure, though etymologists have speculated on its relationship to Germanic words meaning holy or awaken. Over the centuries, witch’s masculine applications melted away, thanks in no small part to the historical persecution of many women believed to be witches.

2. WEREWOLF

Werewolf is another lexical beastie that prowled Old English. While the OED can date it back to 1000, the dictionary also notes the word was never in much use, except for among some Scottish speakers, until modern folklore scholarship revived it. Werewolves, we know, are men that turn into wolves—and that’s exactly what the word means. Were comes from an Old English word for man and is distantly related to the same Latin vir (man) which gives us words like virile and virtue. It’s not only wolves that could wear were. Some have told tales of werebears, weretigers, werefoxes, and even werehyenas.

3. FRANKENSTEIN

Yeah, yeah, Frankenstein isn’t the name of the monster: It’s the name of his creator, Victor, in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel. Shelley was inspired by travels in Germany, which took her near Frankenstein Castle. Frankenstein is German surname and place-name, roughly meaning “stone of the Franks.” The Franks, or “freemen,” were a Germanic tribe whose name also survives in frank, and French.

4. VAMPIRE

They say vampires can live forever, but the word is relatively young as far as the English language is concerned. It doesn’t come out of the dark until the early 1700s, borrowed from the French vampire, itself taken from a Slavonic source by way of Hungary. But the etymological flight of vampire may not be over: One Eastern European linguist has argued vampire ultimately comes from a northern Turkish word, uber, meaning witch. (Any connection to the transportation company is coincidental.) And the name of that most famous vampire, Dracula, is actually related to another mythical creature: the dragon.

5. MUMMY

Back in the 1400s, mummy referred to a bituminous substance (think asphalt). This sounds far from ghastly until you consider that the specific material was used as a medicine prepared from mummified human flesh. Its French (mommie) and Latin (mumia) sources also named a substance used to embalm corpses. Latin directly borrowed (via Salerno, the leading medieval school of medicine located in Italy) its mumia from the Arabic mumiya, “bitumen.” The Arabic is said to, er, preserve a Persian root meaning wax. It wasn’t until the 1600s that mummy, used for Egyptian mummification, actually named those de-organed, embalmed corpses. And it wasn’t until 1930s Hollywood that Boris Karloff gives us the monster, The Mummy.

6. GHOUL

It may not be too surprising that mummy comes from Arabic, what with Ancient Egypt and all. But ghoul? Yes, this word also comes from the Middle East. In Arabic mythology, a ghoul, or ghul, robbed graves and ate corpses. The root is a verb that means, appropriately, “to seize.” The word started marauding English thanks to a 1780s translation of an Arabic tale.

7. GOBLIN

Where there are ghouls there are goblins, at least if the Halloween stock phrase is any measure. This name of this mischievous, ugly folk creature might come from the Greek kobalos, a kind of scoundrel. According to this etymological theory, kobalos passed into Latin and then French, where Gobelinus is documented as the name for a spirit haunting the city of Evreux in the Middle Ages. Goblin enters English by the 1320s. A hobgoblin, a related impish creature, features hob, which comes from a shortened nickname for Robert, as it is for Robin Goodfellow, an English puck many will know from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

8. DEMON

Demon is another word from Ancient Greek. In that tongue, a daimon variously signified a god, divinity, attendant spirit, or even the force of fate itself. The base of this daimon is a Greek verb meaning “to divide.” The ancients envisioned the Fates divvying out people’s lots in life. Demon went to the dark side when Greek authors used it to translate Hebrew terms for baddies in the Old Testament.

9. DEVIL

Like daimon, the Greek diabolos was a biblical Greek translation of the Hebrew word satan in the Old Testament. The Hebrew satan means an adversary, literally an “obstructor” or “plotter-against.” The Greek diabolos, a slanderer or accuser, picks up on this idea, as it literally means “one who throws something across the path of another.” The words symbol and ballistics share a root with it. Old English rendered diabolos a deofol.

10. ZOMBIE

Like mummies, zombies are also corpses brought back to life. But unlike mummy, zombie was brought into English not from the Middle East but from West Africa. The Kikongo language spoken around the Congo has nzambi (god) and zumbi (fetish), with zombie originally the name of a snake deity in voodoo religion. Via the slave trade, the word made its way to Haiti, where folklore told of corpses magically raised from the dead. Zombie wanders into English in the 1810s. Other scholars have speculated, though, that zombie might be a Louisiana Creole word from the Spanish sombra, a shade or ghost.

11. GHOST

Speaking of ghosts, they’ve been long haunting English. The Old English gast meant spirit, including good ones, bad ones, and, well, holy ones. (The h creeped in thanks to Dutch and Flemish cognates.) Forms of ghost are indeed found throughout the Germanic languages, possibly all coming from an Indo-European root referring to fear or amazement. Ghost settles into its modern meaning—an apparition of a dead person—in the 14th century.

12. SASQUATCH

One place you can genuinely catch sight of this large, hairy hominid is out on the streets during Halloween. Americans named him Bigfoot, Canadians Sasquatch. Sasquatch comes from the Halkomelem language, spoken by a First Nations people in the Pacific Northwest, a region whose mountains the saesq’ec, or “hairy mountain man,” is believed to roam. Sasquatch has been sighted in the English language since 1929.

13. YETI

Finally, the Sasquatch’s snowy counterpart is the Yeti, said to trek the Himalayan mountains. Yeti comes from the Tibetan yeh-teh, a little man-like animal, even though the creature looms much larger in our imaginations. Yeh-teh might more literally be rendered as “rocky bear.” And thanks to a 1921 journalist reporting on a Mt. Everest expedition, we have the Abominable Snowman. The journalist translated the Tibetan metoh kangmi, another name for the Yeti, as “abominable snowman”; it more closely means “filthy snowman.”

The Cubs are headed back to the World Series for the first time since 1945. They may not have won a World Series title in a very long time (as announcer Jack Brickhouse once said, “Any team can have a bad century”), but during that dry spell they have been enriching the language of baseball. Here are nine phrases that trace back to the Cubs.

1. WRECKING CREW

The phrase “wrecking crew” has a life outside of baseball in salvage, music, and football, but in baseball, according to The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, it was first applied as a term for a group of heavy hitters in reference to the 1912 Chicago Cubs.

2. TINKER TO EVERS TO CHANCE 

In 1910, New York Evening Mail columnist Franklin P. Adams wrote a poem called “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon” about the double-play damage the Cubs trio of shortstop Joe Tinker, second baseman Johnny Evers, and first baseman Frank Chance had inflicted on the Giants:

These are the saddest of possible words:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double—
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”

The phrase “Tinker to Evers to Chance” became a popular way to remark on any well-executed, coordinated achievement. For example, according to a 2010 Chicago Tribune article, “a 2003 motion picture ad for Golden Globe-winner The Hours, starring Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore, proclaims that ‘Kidman to Meryl to Moore’ is ‘the acting version of baseball’s fabled ‘Tinker to Evers to Chance.’” 

3. LET’S PLAY TWO

The beloved “Mr. Cub” Ernie Banks, known for his cheerful disposition, used to express his love of the game by saying “It’s a beautiful day for a ballgame. Let’s play two.” As Scott Simon said after Banks died at the beginning of this year, “It was a phrase he used to remind himself and other players that whatever their complaints, they got to play a game for a living, and hear the cheers of strangers. It was a reminder to all of us to cherish life and the chance to have work that gives enjoyment to others.” 

4. BLEACHER BUM

The Dickson Baseball Dictionary defines a bleacher bum as “One of a horde of boisterous, often shirtless fans who inhabit the bleachers.” In 1966, a group of 10 devoted fans at Wrigley Field proudly declared themselves “bleacher bums,” and their wild, inebriated antics became part of the attraction of a day at the ballpark.

5. HOLY COW!

Long time Cubs announcer Harry Caray was not the first to exclaim “Holy cow!” but all the same, he made it his own trademark cry. It’s the title of his autobiography, where he explains that he trained himself to say “holy cow” early in his career because “it was the only exclamation I could come up with that didn’t involve profanity.” 

6. IT MIGHT BE, IT COULD BE, IT IS

Another Harry Carayism, the rising excitement of “It might be … it could be … IT IS!” is the perfect send off for a home run ball or any other triumph at the end of a tension-filled moment.

7. WOO!

The single word “woo” does not come from Cubs baseball, but what we linguists might call “the extended ‘woo’ list construction,” perfected by superfan Ronnie “Woo Woo” Wickers, has undeniable Cubs pedigree. A typical example of the construction: “Cubs, woo! Love, woo! Cubs, woo! We’re number one, woo! Baseball, woo! Cubs, woo!”

8. THE FRIENDLY CONFINES

This nickname had been applied to other ballparks in the old days, but it only stuck to cozy, neighborhood Wrigley Field.

9. I DON’T CARE WHO WINS, AS LONG AS IT’S THE CUBS

In the 1940s and ’50s, Cubs announcer Bert Wilson would often wax rhapsodic about the beautiful weather or the wonderful atmosphere at the game and conclude with “I don’t care who wins, as long as it’s the Cubs.” Fans of other teams or pursuits have since used the phrase, substituting their own choices for the ending, but none has felt the emotion behind it as deeply or sincerely as a Cubs fan.

During last night’s debate, in an exchange on the topic of immigration, Donald Trump said, “We have some bad hombres here and we need to get them out.” The phrase bad hombres immediately became a hashtag on Twitter and the source of jokes all over the internet.

But there was some confusion about the word hombre, as shown by the report of a spike in lookups of the word ombre. Hombre is the Spanish word for “man,” and according to Merriam-Webster, has been used in English in the phrase bad hombre since the 19th century. Ombre, from the French for “shaded” (and related to the words umbrella and umbrage), is a term for a shading of colors from light into dark, currently popular for a type of shaded dye hairstyle.

As Merriam-Webster editor Kory Stamper explains in the Washington Post, “we seek out words that catch us by the ears.” Hombre is an unusual and noticeable word to use in a presidential debate, and people were drawn to find out more about it. But that silent h makes it harder to look up if you’ve never seen it before. Hopefully everyone eventually found what they were looking for. Or perhaps they simply agreed that we need to get out the bad ombres, as shown in this tweet from Andrés Almeida:

Bad ombres pic.twitter.com/1iiHOtg8yi

— Andrés Almeida (@andresdavid) October 20, 2016

The 2016 presidential election has certainly given us a lot to talk about, including actual words used by the candidates themselves. As we run up to the big day on November 8, here’s a look back at some of the buzzwords the campaign and candidates have given us—and a look into their surprising histories.

1. ESTABLISHMENT

In many ways, this election has sought to destabilize the political establishment, fittingly enough for the etymology of the word. Coming into Middle English from the French, the word ultimately derives from the Latin stabilire, “to make stable,” from which the word stable is also derived. In the 1700s and 1800s, establishment began referring to post-Reformation English churches that were “set up” with the approval of the state. The notion of the establishment as “the powers that be” doesn’t emerge until the 1920s.

2. RIGGED

Many candidates and voters have expressed their frustration with the establishment because they feel the political and economic system is rigged against them. The word rigged has nothing to do with any ship of state, so to speak. In the 17th century, a rig was a colloquial term for a “scheme,” “prank,” or “swindle,” like the thimblerig, an early shell game. Some etymologists think this rig comes from the phrase to play rex, “to act like a lord or master.” Such is the power, apparently, that trickery can endow. By the 1820 and ’30s, rigged auctions were huckstering shabby wares and rigged stocks were illegally manipulating their values, both of which anticipate today’s use of rigged.

3. QUAGMIRE

Throughout his campaign, Bernie Sanders described geopolitical situations in the Middle East as quagmires. But back in the 1560s, a quagmire was far from the desert terrain we associate with that region: It was wet, boggy land. The word probably literally means “marsh marsh,” joining quag, a variant of quab (of obscure origin) and mire (from Old Norse). Sanders didn’t employ a new metaphor, though, with his quagmire: The word has referred to “sticky situations” since the 1570s.

4. BOMBAST

Many pundits and critics have described Donald Trump’s style as bombastic. Bombast has characterized “inflated” language since the 1580s, describing speech that is “puffed up” like the cotton, once called bombast, that was used to pad or stuff clothing. The word traces back to the Latin (bombax) and Greek (bombyx) for a yet softer substance: silk.

5. STAMINA

Speaking of fibers, stamina—that “vigor” and “endurance” much discussed this year as a presidential qualification—comes from the Latin word stamen, meaning “thread.” In Roman textiles, the stamen was a specific kind of thread that served as a foundation for a weave. The Romans also used stamen for the “thread of life” spun by the Fates, whose mythical weaving determined how long humans lived.

Both senses of the Latin stamen, a foundational thread and one’s inborn longevity, came to influence the modern sense of stamina, which gradually emerges between 1500 and 1800 for the “essential qualities” that gives an organism its “energy” and “perseverance.” Note that qualities is plural, as is stamina in Latin. The stamen of a plant is also named for the “thread-like” shape of the organ.

6. TEMPERAMENT

Temperament has been another key attribute central to this presidential election. In the 1400s, when the word first appears, temperament was the “mixture of qualities” in an organism, which proportion was believed to determine its nature or disposition. Hence the four temperaments, where one’s personality depends on which of the humors (black bile, yellow bile, blood, or phlegm) prevails most in them. Temperament broadened in meaning to one’s general “character” or “constitution” by the 1800s, and today can connote an angry or cool-headed demeanor. And as a word, temperament comes from the Latin temperare, “to divide/combine in proportion” or “regulate.” This verb also gives English temper, “to moderate,” and temper, as in a short one.

7. POLL

People with an even temperament tend to keep their heads. Polls, whose ups and downs we ride all the way to Election Day, are all about counting those heads—and quite literally so. As far back as the 1300s, a poll was the “top of the head” (which explains tadpole, “toad-head”). The total number in a group of people can be determined by counting by poll, or headcount. Polls referred to the total number of votes by the 1730s, and to statistical surveys by the 1900s.

8. ENDORSE

Heads aren’t the only body part of the 2016 road to the White House. Backs are, too. Many conservative newspapers made headlines by endorsing a Democrat—here, Hillary Clinton, of course—for the first time in their history. In the 1300s, to endorse was “to write on the back of” something, especially a financial document like a check. Endorsing a check serves as an act of verification. This notion of verification extended to “confirmation” or “approval” in the mid-1800s, hence political endorsements. At root is the Latin indorsare, joining in (on) and dorsum (back). Dorsum also yields do-si-do (via French dos-à- dos), which involves dancing “back to back.”

9. SHIMMY

No do-si-do has found the political spotlight this campaign (yet). But another dance, the shimmy, has, thanks to Hillary Clinton’s much-memed shoulder shaking in the first presidential debate. The shimmy started out as a popular (and often banned) jazz dance in the 1910s. Some etymologists think the shimmy shake comes from shimmy, an 1830s dialectical variant of chemise, historically a kind of smock or undergarment. The connection between the article of clothing and the dance move is uncertain.

10. PIVOT

The shimmy isn’t the only fancy maneuver of the election. After the candidates clinch their nominations, they pivot away from winning over their party base towards the general electorate. Back in the 14th century, a pivot was a “hinge pin,” the central rod around which some mechanism, like a pair of shears or scissors, rotates. And it’s this idea of a central point that leads to a word like pivotal in the early 1800s. Basketball players were pivoting by the late 1890s, whose quick turning on a pivot leads to the political pivot used by politicians today. The English pivot is from the French pivot, a word whose deeper origins are unclear.

11. CLINCH

And why are candidates said to clinch nominations? Because they settle the contest decisively, like a clinched nail. To clinch a nail is to hammer it through a board and bend back the point, which ensures it’s fastened. The verb appears by the 1570s, probably a variant form of clench. The sense of victory-securing clinching emerges in the 1700s. The root of clinch and clench is the same that gives English cling.

12. EMAIL

Hillary Clinton’s email controversy has been clinging to her campaign since the news broke early last year. The word email, which dates to the late 1970s, merges together electronic mail, which goes back two decades earlier. Clinton found herself on the hot seat for emailing over a private server, but, historically, mail used to be quite the private object. In Middle English, mail was a wallet or traveling bag. In the mid-1600s, English speakers were referring to a mail of letters—post being transported in bags, naturally. The term didn’t name the letters or packages themselves until the mid-1800s in American English.

13. HOAX

In past tweets, Donald Trump has treated climate change as a hoax. The word hoax, a kind of elaborate or mischievous deception, turns up in the late 18th century and probably developed out of hocus, an older term for a “trick” a juggler would perform. In the early 1600s, a juggler, originally a jester or conjuror, could have gone by the nickname of Hocus Pocus.

By the 1630s, jugglers were using hocus pocus as a magic formula in their tricks. Many like to claim, thanks to a snarky suggestion by Anglican clergyman John Tillotson, that hocus pocus is a corruption of hoc est corpus meum, “This is my body,” a Latin phrase used to consecrate the Eucharist-cum-Body-of-Jesus-Christ during mass. It’s more likely that hocus pocus is just some sham Latin, made up by an old performer to impress—or perplex—an audience. And no doubt, if the words alone are any measure, the 2016 presidential election has been quite the show.

If you simply want to find slang, there are plenty of places to look online, but if you want a thoroughly researched, meticulously documented view of 600 years of English slang expressions, Jonathon Green’s Green’s Dictionary of Slang is what you need. Until now, getting a look at Green’s three volume masterpiece involved a trip to the library, or shelling out hundreds of dollars. This week, with the launching of Green’s Dictionary of Slang Online, it’s become a whole lot easier to dig into the fascinating, long history of English slang.

The site allows lookups of word definitions and etymologies for free, and, for a well-worth-it subscription fee, offers citations and more extensive search options. We have made good use of Green’s dictionary here at mental_floss, for articles like “31 Adorable Slang Terms for Sexual Intercourse from the Last 600 Years,” “35 Classy Slang Terms for Naughty Bits from the Past 600 Years,” and “35 Creative Slang Terms for Death from the Past 600 Years.”

The range of usually-not-discussed-in-polite-company human experience is covered in the dictionary, and constantly expanding with new research. As Green’s announcement states, “the dictionary breaks down into the following major themes and categories; the order is based on frequency of definition:

Crime and Criminals 5012; Drink, Drinking and Drunks 4589; Drugs 3976; Money 3342; Women (almost invariably considered negatively or at best sexually) 2968; Fools and Foolish 2403; Men (of various descriptions, not invariably, but often self-aggrandizing) 2183; Sexual Intercourse 1740; Penis: 1351; Homosexuals/-ity 1238; Prostitute/-ion 1185; Vagina 1180; Policeman / Policing 1034; Terms of Racial or National Abuse: 1000; Masturbate/-ion 945; Die, Death, Dead 831; Beat or Hit 728; Mad 776; Anus or Buttocks 634; Defecate/-ion & Urinate/-ion 540; Kill or Murder 521; Promiscuous / Promiscuity 347; Unattractive 279; Fat 247; Oral Sex 240; Vomiting 219; Anal Sex 180; STDs 65.

Now doesn’t that sound like a lexicographical good time? Check out Green’s Dictionary of Slang Online here.

Halloween has been celebrated in the United States since the 1800s, thanks to Irish and Scottish immigrants who brought over their All Hallows’ Eve traditions. So it’s no surprise that a distinctly American English has risen around the holiday, including these 18 spooky regionalisms we’ve gathered in our continued partnership with the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE).

1. HOLLY EVE

In Arkansas or Missouri in the 1930s, West Virginia in the 1940s, or Pennsylvania in the 1950s, you might have referred to Halloween as Holly Eve. Hence, says DARE, a Holly Eve-er is “one who goes out on Halloween.”

2. POKE OF MOONSHINE

Another name for the jack o’ lantern, at least in 1930s Connecticut. A peak in the Adirondacks shares the name and, according to The New York Times, might come from the Algonquin Indian pohqui, meaning “broken,” and moosie, meaning “smooth,” possibly referring to “the level summit and stunning east-facing cliffs.” In the case of a jack o’ lantern, it could possibly refer to its carved and intact surfaces. In South Carolina, to move like a poke of moonshine is to move slowly and lazily.

3. FALSE FACE

The term false face originated in the late 18th century, according to DARE, to mean a mask in general, and in the early 1900s came to refer specifically to a Halloween mask. From a 1911 ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer: “Halloween Masks—We have that false face you want for Tuesday night, grotesque and funny.”

The term seems to have been popular in the 1940s and ‘50s, with DARE quotes from Ohio, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Mississippi, Kentucky, Indiana, and Texas. One individual states that their grandmother, who was born in New York City in the 1880s, used “‘false face’ (stress on ‘false’) as her ordinary word for ‘Halloween mask,’” and while the mask “didn’t have to be worn specifically on or for Halloween … it did have to cover the entire face.”

4. AND 5. HELP THE POOR AND SOAP OR EATS

While trick or treat is the norm for bonbon begging, in 1930s and ’40s Detroit, you might have also heard help the poor. Over in parts of California, Ohio, and Minnesota, the candy call might have been soap or eats or soap or grub. According to a Wisconsin resident, soap has to do with “threatening to soap windows” if goodies aren’t given.

6. PENNY NIGHT

Another trick or treat alternative is penny night, at least in southwest Ohio. The term also refers to the Halloween celebration itself. We’re not sure what pennies have to do with it except as sweets stand-ins.

7. BEGGARS’ NIGHT

Parts of the North and North Midland— especially Ohio and Iowa—call Halloween like it is: beggars’ night. “Beggars’ Night, how ’bout a bite?” you might have heard in the Buckeye State. Beggars’ night could be celebrated on “one or more days” the week before Halloween, much to the annoyance of several of those quoted in DARE. From a 1936 issue of the Piqua Daily Call in Ohio: “If the kids would get organized and pick on one particular date for their Beggar’s Night, we could brace ourselves for the onslaught.”

One Ohio resident said they had beggar’s night on October 30, on which they said, “Please help the poor,” while on Halloween they said, “Trick or treat.” The same practice also occurred on Thanksgiving eve, according to quotes from New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New York City.

8. DEVIL’S NIGHT

As a Michigan resident, you might have called the night before Halloween devil’s night, during which, according to quotes in DARE, kids might vandalize and set fire to abandoned buildings. In 1995, Detroit rechristened devil’s night as Angel’s Night, a community-organized event in which tens of thousands of volunteers “help patrol and surveil the streets during the days leading up to Halloween.”

9. MISCHIEF NIGHT

To this New Jersey native, Halloween eve has always been mischief night, on which you could expect to get TP’d, egged, and, in the case of our mailbox one year, spray-painted. According to quotes in DARE, additional activities might include doorbell ringing, gate removing (hence, gate night in some parts of the Northeast), car window soaping, pumpkin stealing, and porch furniture moving.

In England, mischief night refers to the prank-filled evenings of April 30 (May Day eve), October 30, or November 4, the night before Guy Fawkes Day. The Oxford English Dictionary’s earliest citation of the term is from 1830, while DARE’s is from 1977. It’s not clear exactly when the New Jersey/southeastern Pennsylvania meaning of mischief night originated. The earliest record we could find was from 1947 in an article, “Passaic Takes the ”Mischief Out of ‘Mischief Night.’”

A variation on mischief night might be mystery night, attested in Essex and northern Middlesex counties, as well as other parts of north and central Jersey.

10. AND 11. GOOSEY NIGHT AND PICKET NIGHT

Garden State alternatives to mischief night include goosey night and picket night. While picket night might come from “the custom of producing noise by running a stick along a picket fence,” according to Lexical Variation in New Jersey by Robert Foster, it’s unclear where goosey night comes from. If we had to guess, perhaps from goose, meaning to poke or startle.

12. CABBAGE NIGHT

In some northern parts of the United States, October 30 is known as cabbage night, during which, according to DARE, “young people throw cabbages and refuse on people’s porches, and play other pranks.” Why cabbages? As io9 explains, it might have to do with an old Scottish tradition in which young women would pull up cabbages “to examine their stalks,” see if their future husbands “would be lean or plump,” and inexplicably hurl the vegetables at neighbors’ homes.

13. CLOTHESLINE NIGHT

In parts of 1950s Vermont, clotheslines were apparently the victim of much TP’ing on Halloween eve. Hence, clothesline night.

14. AND 15. CORN NIGHT AND DOORBELL NIGHT

Corn was the projectile of choice in Ohio areas in the late 1930s. One resident remembered the custom of celebrating the night before Halloween by chucking “dried, shelled corn” at porches. In other parts of the Buckeye State, ringing and running is preferred on what’s known as doorbell night.

16. LIGHT NIGHT

Over in New York, mischief makers would “fling rocks at bare street lights,” says one resident—hence, light night.

17. MOVING NIGHT

After a raucous moving night in Baltimore, you might find anything not nailed down—including gates, flower pots, and porch furniture—moved to a neighboring yard, down the block, or even on the next block.

18. TICKTACK NIGHT

The cabbage night equivalent in regions including Iowa, Ohio, Maryland, New Jersey, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. Ticktack are various “homemade noisemakers used to make rapping or other annoying sounds against a window or door as a prank,” especially around Halloween, as well as the prank itself. In parts of Ohio, one resident said, the tick tack noises were from the sound of corn being thrown at windows.

According to Foster’s Lexical Variation in New Jersey, “Mercer County is the home of Tick Tack Night,” where the name is sometimes reinterpreted as “Tic Tac Toe Night” and some pranksters believed they were “called upon to draw tic tac toe diagrams on houses and walks.”

During last night’s presidential debate, the candidates were asked what they would do about the humanitarian crisis in the Syrian city of Aleppo. Shortly after that, Kory Stamper, a lexicographer with Merriam-Webster, tweeted out a list of the words that were showing a spike in lookups at the Merriam-Webster dictionary site. At the top of the list was lepo, followed by a list of other debate words in which Aleppo came seventh.

Was it really the case that people were hearing Aleppo as a lepo? Searches on Google indicated that this was indeed the case. Google Trends showed a spike in Google searches for lepo at the same time

The related queries show that it was indeed the case that people were hearing Aleppo as a lepo (or in some cases, el lepo).

If you’ve never heard of Aleppo, this is not such a hard mistake to make. The rhythm and stress pattern of Aleppo makes that first syllable sound exactly like the indefinite article a. And there actually happens to be a meaning for lepo in English. According to Merriam-Webster, it is a combining form, from Greek, which means husk, rind, or scale as in lepocyte or lepothrix. These old-fashioned words refer, respectively, to a type of biological cell with a cell wall and a scaly follicle disease affecting the armpit or pubic hair.

It is probably the case that most people were steered by their lookups to the correct spelling of the Syrian city and, hopefully, to more information about the situation there. What is merica? jokes aside, that is just how it should work when people aren’t quite sure what they’re looking for.