Plastic surgery is “a branch of surgery concerned with improving the function or appearance of parts of the body through reconstructive or cosmetic procedures.” Both serve a purpose — reconstructive surgery, in particular, is critical to recovery after some types of trauma — but critics of cosmetic procedures sometimes call out cases in which they think the patient ends up looking overly artificial. For this reason, many people assume the “plastic” in “plastic surgery” has something to do with synthetic polymers. In reality, the word “plastic” is derived from the 19th-century development of the medical field and the Greek language.

The Greek adjective plastikos means that something is “capable of being molded or shaped.” To the ancient Greeks, the word was widely used in relation to pottery and other handmade goods. In time, plastikos spawned the Latin plasticus, which then became the English term “plastic,” meaning “capable of shaping or molding a mass of matter,” around the 1630s — long before the material called plastic was developed.

Around the early 19th century, “plastic” spread to the surgical world. In 1818, a German surgeon named Karl Ferdinand von Graefe pioneered new techniques related to molding and reshaping noses. He published a study called Rhinoplastik — combining the prefix rhino-, meaning “nose,” and the Greek-inspired suffix -plastik. In the wake of publication there was a spike in other surgeons conceiving of and performing various “-plasties” that targeted other physical features.

With the emergence of so many similarly named reconstructive surgeries, it wasn’t long until the umbrella term “plastic surgery” emerged. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the earliest known instance in an 1837 edition of the Lancet medical journal, which refers to the concept as “a branch of surgery in which alone the operating surgeon becomes a real artist.” In 1838, surgeon Eduard Zeis helped popularize the term in a textbook titled Handbuch der plastischen Chirurgie (Handbook of Plastic Surgery).

So you can see that in an etymological sense, plastic surgery is clearly derived from the Greek plastikos and not our modern understanding of plastic materials. Human-made plastics weren’t invented until the 1860s — several decades after “plastic surgery” was coined as a surgical term.

Your grandparents may occupy roughly the same place on the family tree as someone else’s, but what you call them could depend on where that tree took root.

In Pennsylvania, a grandmother and grandfather might be Mom-Mom and Pop-Pop, respectively. Head north into New England, and you’re more likely to encounter Grammy and Grampy; head south and Meemaw and Pawpaw enter the conversation. Elsewhere, grandparents answer to Nana, Papa, and an ever-expanding collection of family-specific monikers.

These names aren’t random. Some reflect regional speech patterns or the influence of immigrant communities; others are variations on words for mothers and fathers. And many are simply the linguistic handiwork of kids, who have a long history of turning difficult words into easier — and often much cuter — options.

A grandparent’s nickname can offer clues about where their family is from, what languages they speak, and sometimes even which generation got to decide what everyone would call their parents’ parents. Here are some of the most popular and distinctive regional names for grandparents and the stories behind them.

Few grandparent names announce a Mid-Atlantic connection quite like Mom-Mom (also spelled as MomMom or Mom Mom) and Pop-Pop (also PopPop or Pop Pop). The names are particularly associated with Pennsylvania and neighboring states, according to a survey by baby gear brand Chicco, although their reach extends beyond the region.

The doubled syllables sound like baby talk, and in a sense, that’s exactly what they are: Reduplication, the repetition of a sound or syllable, is common in words used by and with young children. Nana, Mimi, Maw-Maw, and Paw-Paw follow the same pattern.

But Pennsylvania’s grandparent vocabulary has also been linked to the region’s German and Pennsylvania Dutch population, signalling that familial names sometimes come from a family’s country of origin.

In New England, Grampy has long been a familiar alternative to Grandpa, while Grammy joins the broader American collection of names for grandmothers.

The “-y” ending is another way English speakers turn names into affectionate diminutives: Compare Daddy, Mommy, Granny, and Nanny. 

The American South has perhaps the richest collection of grandparent names. Meemaw, Mamaw, Maw-Maw, and Memaw are particularly associated with Southern speakers. They appear alongside Granny, Grandma, and Nana, with a particular name often held as tradition in a family.

These names may look like completely different words, but many are variations on Mama and Ma, reshaped to distinguish a grandmother from a child’s mother.

In Southern-speak, Pawpaw and Papaw are Meemaw’s grandfather counterparts.

The spellings vary, as do the pronunciations, but the underlying construction is familiar: a child-friendly repetition or alteration of Pa or Papa.

While pawpaw is also the name of a fruit, the two words have different histories. In American English, Pawpaw is a family term, while the fruit name ultimately comes from the Spanish papaya.

Unlike some of its more geographically distinctive cousins, Nana refuses to stay in one place. It is one of the most popular grandmother names in the U.S., appearing across regions and generations. That ubiquity makes it harder to pin to a single American origin, though its first known usage dates back to the end of the 19th century.

Pa and Papa are similarly widespread, particularly across the Midwest and South. Both are short, easily pronounced words that have equivalents in numerous languages, making it difficult to assign them to one particular American region or ethnic group — which might help explain their staying power. Papa, which is also commonly used for one’s father in British English, originated in 1677.

Not all regional grandparent names are variations on English words. In parts of the U.S. where there are large Spanish-speaking populations, such as Florida, Abuelo and the less formal Abuelito are natural terms for one’s grandfather. Abuela and Abuelita are the female equivalents.

Similarly, families with German backgrounds may refer to a grandfather as Opa and a grandmother as Oma. According to a Preply survey, Opa is the most popular name for grandfathers in Nebraska, while Oma rules for grandmothers in Pennsylvania and New Mexico.

In Hawaii, Tūtū is a familiar term for a grandparent, with Tūtū kāne and Tūtū wahine used to specify grandfather and grandmother, respectively.

Like Abuelo, it is a reminder that the country’s familial vocabulary reflects the many languages and cultures that have shaped American communities.

Words can do just about anything. Not only do they define feelings, actions, ideas, and everyday things, but they also can describe people’s personalities, reveal where you’re from, and even give a name to your doctor’s messy handwriting. 

But some words have a more meta job: They describe other words. English has a surprisingly rich vocabulary for doing just that — one that captures the tricks, quirks, accidents, and downright oddities that make language so much fun. Here are 14 of them.

If you’ve ever heard Jimi Hendrix sing, “’Scuse me while I kiss this guy,” you’ve experienced a mondegreen — a misheard word or phrase, especially in song lyrics. (Jimi actually sang, “’Scuse me while I kiss the sky,” in the 1967 hit “Purple Haze.”) The term “mondegreen” came from a similar mishearing: Writer Sylvia Wright thought she heard the name “Lady Mondegreen” in a Scottish ballad where the actual words were “laid him on the green.” She officially coined the term “mondegreen” in 1954.

You know that people can have sandwiches named after them (see: the Reuben), but did you know that “sandwich” itself is named after a person? (That would be John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich.) This makes it an eponym, or a word that comes from a (real or fictional) person’s name. “Boycott,” which comes from Charles Boycott, a 19th-century English land agent who became the target of a famous campaign of social ostracism, is another example.

Before a word officially becomes a word, it can be a neologism, or a newly coined term created to describe something genuinely new or as a bit of wordplay. “Blog,” “selfie,” and “doomscrolling” all began their lives as neologisms. The term itself, which derives from the French néologie, meaning “the coining of new words,” is much older; its first known use was in 1754. 

A retronym is a type of neologism where a new word or phrase is created to distinguish an older version of something from its newer model. “Acoustic guitar,” for example, became a useful retronym after the invention of the electric guitar. Similarly, terms such as “snail mail” and “landline” emerged to distinguish older technologies from their newer counterparts. 

A portmanteau is a word formed by blending parts of two or more other words, combining their sounds or spellings — and usually their meanings, too. “Brunch,” for example, combines “breakfast” and “lunch.” We have Lewis Carroll to thank for “portmanteau”; it comes from Through the Looking-Glass, where the word, a play on an old term for “suitcase,” is used to describe a word packed with two meanings.

A backronym is an existing word, phrase, or name that’s later turned into an acronym — an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of a series of words — through the invention of a phrase to fit its letters. For example, SAD, or seasonal affective disorder — a type of depression that typically occurs in the fall and winter months and is triggered by fewer daylight hours — was given the name so that the acronym would be appropriate for the disorder. “Backronym,” a portmanteau of “back” and “acronym,” first appeared in 1983 in The Washington Post, when columnist Bob Levey asked readers to submit their best neologisms. He credited it as “the brainchild of Meredith G. Williams of Potomac” and defined it as the “same as an ‘acronym,’ except that the words were chosen to fit the letters.”

The scariest thing about a ghost word, a term that appears in a dictionary or other text but doesn’t actually exist in the lexicon, is that it typically got there because of a typo, transcription error, or misunderstanding (oh, the horror!). “Dord,” which appeared in the second edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary for years before editors realized it was a mistake caused by a notation being misread as a word, is one famous example. 

An eggcorn is a mistaken version of a word or phrase that sounds like the original but makes its own kind of sense. For example, “for all intensive purposes” is an eggcorn for “for all intents and purposes”: It’s wrong, but it plausibly could work. The term “eggcorn,” coined by linguist Geoffrey Pullum, comes from someone mishearing “acorn.”

Similar to an eggcorn, a malapropism is the accidental use of a word that sounds similar to the one intended but has a wildly different meaning. One famous example comes from former President George W. Bush during a 2000 campaign speech, when he declared, “We cannot let terrorists and rogue nations hold this nation hostile or hold our allies hostile.” (He meant “hostage,” not “hostile.”) Though its first known use was in 1826, “malapropism” comes from Mrs. Malaprop, a character in Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s 1775 play The Rivals, who had a memorable habit of making such verbal blunders as describing someone as “the pineapple of politeness” instead of “the pinnacle of politeness.”

Rev. Dr. William Archibald Spooner, an Oxford dean and lecturer, was a noted scholar but reportedly prone to regular verbal mix-ups — so much so that the accidental switching of sounds between two or more words, resulting in a funny new phrase, became known as a spoonerism. Saying “blushing crow” instead of “crushing blow” is one of the most famous examples attributed to him.

A contronym is a word with two meanings that contradict each other. “Sanction,” for example, can mean either “to approve something” or “to impose a penalty,” while “cleave” can mean “to split apart” or “to cling together.” These linguistic double agents have multiple names, including “autoantonym,” “antagonym,” or “Janus word,” a reference to the Roman god Janus, who was traditionally depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions.

If you’re prone to spelling mistakes, a heteronym has probably been to blame at least once. Derived from Greek roots meaning “different name,” “heteronym” refers to a word that’s spelled the same as another word but pronounced differently and with a different meaning. For example, “lead” can refer to the metal when pronounced “led,” or to guiding someone when pronounced “leed.” 

“Lead” is also a homograph, which is a broader term for words that are spelled alike but differ in meaning, pronunciation, or both. Not all homographs are heteronyms, though: “Bear,” for example, is spelled and pronounced the same whether it means the animal or “to endure something.” (To be a heteronym, the noun and the verb would be pronounced differently.) The term comes from Greek roots meaning “same writing.”

If you love Lewis Carroll’s 1871 poem “Jabberwocky,” you’re a fan of nonce words.  These are words invented for a very specific occasion or context and that are not meant to become a permanent part of the language — though some do catch on. The term comes from the phrase “for the nonce,” meaning “for the particular occasion,” so a nonce word is quite literally a word made for the moment. “Chortle,” a chuckle-snort combo, is one of Carroll’s nonce words that has stuck around. 

Used in goods ranging from formal footwear to watch bands and wallets, patent leather is a stylish, extremely durable material relied on by clothiers around the globe. By definition, patent leather is “a leather with a hard smooth glossy surface,” and it’s known as much for its eye-catching luster as for  its water- and scuff-resistant nature. But is this style of leather actually under patent, or is the term less literal in nature?

The Oxford English Dictionary records the term “patent leather,” referring to leather coated in a protective varnish, appearing in print by the end of the 18th century. The process for creating patent leather in those times was later described in detail in an 1857 edition of Scientific American. It involved boiling a mixture of linseed oil and white lead, rubbing that into traditional leather to form a protective layer, and then finally applying a varnish to give the leather its shiny appearance.

As to the etymological origins of the term,there’s a likely connection to English tanners of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Many of those tanners received patents related to leathermaking; among them was one patent from 1799 for “a method of painting and colouring all kinds of leather.”

But patent leather, as we know it today, was perfected and popularized in America by inventor Seth Boyden. During the 1810s to 1820s, Boyden took inspiration from those European leather workers and came up with an American version of varnished leather. While this was referred to as patent leather — carrying over from the Europeans who had previously patented similar techniques — Boyden never actually patented his own process.