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viking (paid)

  • Dave Wilton

Dave Wilton

21 Mar 2025 • 6 min read
B&W photo of a cat in a winged viking helmet and scale-mail breastplate, with the caption “Brünnhilde"

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Photo of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, in judicial robe, sitting in a chair

notorious

9 March 2026 Usage manuals like to point out that notorious refers to someone or something of unfavorable reputation and that the word should not be used to mean merely famous or notable. While this is true to an extent, like many questions of usage the answer is more complicated,
09 Mar 2026 4 min read
Picketers in front of an Oxnard, California supermarket carrying signs that read Boycott in English and Boicot in Spanish
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boycott (paid)

06 Mar 2026 3 min read
Image of large tropical cyclone taken from earth orbit

hurricane

6 March 2026 Hurricane comes to us from the Taino language of the Caribbean via Spanish. The Taino word is hurákan. It makes its first English language appearance in Richard Eden’s 1555 translation of Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés’s 1535 summary of La historia general de las
06 Mar 2026 2 min read
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