A few years back, an older Israeli man told me that my daughter's name, Kameya, meant "good luck charm" in ancient Hebrew. Was he just pulling my leg? [more inside]
posted on Jun 19, 2008 - 6 answers

What's a good word for 'a spatially or geographically incongruous person/event/object', as an analogue to anachronism, which is 'temporally incongruous'? (New words okay) [more inside]
posted on Oct 30, 2007 - 18 answers

How do you pronounce the last name Vafai? I think that it is Iranian.
posted on Feb 12, 2007 - 8 answers

I'm looking for two Indian (Hindi?) words that mean "high quality" and "low quality" and were used, for example, during the Brittish Raj to describe building construction as first rate or second rate. [more inside]
posted on Nov 12, 2006 - 7 answers

Sentences like "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" contain all the letters in the alphabet. Are there similar sentences that are designed to contain all of the commonly accepted phonemes in the English language?
posted on Oct 14, 2005 - 14 answers

Which dictionaries would you recommend as a gift for a writer friend? [more inside]
posted on Apr 27, 2005 - 35 answers