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whole nine yards (paid)

Dave Wilton

12 Sep 2025 • 8 min read

7 May 1921 headline from the Spartanburg Herald

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keener

Having been born and raised in the United States, I was unaware of the slang noun keener until I came to the University of Toronto. Keener is used to denote enthusiastic and over-eager students and is mildly derogatory. One hears instructors uttering phrases like “I assigned extra reading, knowing that

24 Dec 2025 2 min read

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redskin / red man (paid)

24 Dec 2025 2 min read

2025 Wordorigins Words of the Year (WOTY)

23 December 2025 As in past years, I’ve come up with a list of Words of The Year (WOTY). I do things a bit differently from other sites in that I don’t try to select one term to represent the entire year. Instead, I select twelve terms, one

23 Dec 2025 8 min read

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