Every subculture has its own secret lingo, whether you’re talking about surfers, cab drivers, or coffee-shop baristas. A new book uncovers the slang of everyone from stunt performers to department-store Santas and more. Plus, why is English so darn weird? Those odd spellings and weird pronunciations form a fascinating fossil record. And: a quiz where […]

English spelling seems so irregular because it preserves history instead of matching sound. Early on, this Germanic tongue absorbed Norse and French influences from invaders, and in the late 1400s, printing helped standardize early spellings just before pronunciation shifted dramatically in the Great Vowel Shift. Vowels changed; spellings tended not to. The result is a […]