Category: Science Word Geek

My last post was about the link between the words melancholy and choler, which are based on the Greek word for bile. Melancholy and choler were associated with ...

You don’t see the string chol in too many words except for fairly specialized terms in biochemistry or medicine, so I had to wonder whether there’s ...

This is perhaps the best time of year to visit the Farmers Market, with the tables and baskets full of tomatoes, red peppers, and colorful squash gleaming in th...

Here in the middle of this bafflingly quiet Atlantic hurricane season, I thought I’d look at the words hurricane and typhoon. Both words refer to the same...

In my work as a science editor, I run across unfamiliar terminology. Sometimes it’s baffling, and sometimes it’s charming. Here are some recent exam...

Somewhere in Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series of novels, I ran across a reference to a city called Magnesia. For some reason, those old names t...

Sometimes a name tells us about the way people used to think about something. An initial understanding or categorization may look odd or confusing in late of la...

If you enjoy reading about history or reading old books—histories, books about science, even novels—you’ve probably encountered some of the wonderful old ...

The International Astronomical Union announced recently that public input will be considered when names are assigned to “planetary satellites, newly disco...

Sometimes it’s fun just to see what you can figure out about something by knowing the Latin or Greek roots of its name. This is also a great way to spot c...