Casual conversation is chock-full of faux pas that are technically harmless but can be irksome to those in the know. One such topic for debate is the term “whenever.” Its frequent incorrect usage as a substitute for “when” can be a sore spot for wordsmiths, but it’s a nuanced difference.
While both “when” and “whenever” address time, they differ in how we use them. Behold this frequent offender: “Whenever I was a senior in high school…” This might sound natural (for some) in casual conversation, but it’s technically incorrect. The speaker should use “when” because they’re referring to a specific period of time.
By definition, “whenever” means “at whatever time” — it’s flexible. It contradicts its core meaning when misused to replace a specific instance. Here’s a correct example to consider: “When I’m done at the office today, I’ll go to the grocery store.” Here, “when” correctly denotes a specific moment: after work. The incorrect counterpart, “Whenever I’m done at the office today,” erroneously suggests a more vague timeline for the visit to the grocery store. Even if you don’t know the exact time frame you will be done with your work, “when” is still used to indicate that it will be a specific moment in the future. So, when can we use “whenever”?
“Give me a call whenever you can” is a correct usage. It implies flexibility without a clear or fixed appointment. Similarly, “I like to go for beach walks whenever I get the chance” indicates recurring occasions, not one specified point in time. When in doubt, remember that “when” refers to a defined moment, and “whenever” is about the freedom to act at any time.
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Why is “apple of my eye” a term of endearment? Why not a strawberry? It turns out this idiom started out with a literal meaning, more than 1,000 years ago.
An idiom is a phrase in which the literal meanings of the words don’t translate for the overall intention of the saying. “Apple of my eye” is a term of endearment implying an individual is cherished above others. It can be used romantically or platonically, but always with affection and sometimes suggesting that said “apple” is the center of their world, as in, “His grandson was the apple of his eye.” You might think it’s an idiom because your eye does not contain a literal apple — but if we look at the history and etymology of this phrase, we find a literal meaning that pulls it away from idiom territory.
The phrase was popularized by an appearance in A Midsummer Night’s Dream(c. 1600), Shakespeare’s romantic comedy of errors in which magic and mistaken identity cause lighthearted chaos. Mischievous fairy king Oberon speaks these lines while dripping love potion into a sleeping man’s eyes:
“Flower of this purple dye,
Hit with Cupid’s archery,
Sink in apple of his eye,
When his love he doth espy,”
In 1611, the phrase appeared in the King James Bible in Deuteronomy 32:10: “He kept him as the apple of his eye.” The apple was likely the literal center of the eye in Shakespeare’s version, but the biblical reference was metaphorical.
However, the first documented English-language appearance of the phrase is attributed centuries earlier to King Aelfred the Great of Wessex in 885 CE, beginning the interpretation of the apple referring to the pupil of the eye — the small black dot at the center of one’s eye. In Old English, æppel could refer to anything small and round, including both the fruit and the pupil.
Giving further credence to a literal interpretation of “apple of the eye,” King Aelfred’s Old English had been translated from the Latinpupilla oculi, meaning “pupil of the eye.” The evolution of “apple of the eye” from a literal eye pupil to a figurative term of endearment makes sense to me. Apples hold a prime place in many cultures. The Greek goddess Aphrodite was associated with apples, and in the Bible, they are the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden. Students bring an apple to a beloved teacher, and an “apple a day keeps the doctor away.”
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Words that are extremely similar across multiple languages are called “cognates,” meaning they share the same root word or origin. Here are several words that travel across borders and languages.
You say “toe-may-toh,” I say “toe-mah-toe.” While this playful phrase highlights the differences between British and English accents, there are many words that are extremely similar across multiple languages. Linguists call these terms “cognates,” meaning they share the same root word or origin. Here are several words that travel across borders and languages, always staying recognizably similar.
Chocolate
The edible chocolate known and loved today comes from the cacao bean, first grown thousands of years ago in the Amazon basin. These beans were so valuable for flavoring food and drink that Indigenous peoples traded the beans as currency when Europeans arrived in the region. The word “chocolate” was first used in European and Mexican writings in the late 1500s — “chocolate” was the Pipil people’s word in the Nahuat language for a cacao bean drink.
As the cacao bean traveled the world, the word “chocolate” became associated with the taste of any of the sweet treats made with the bean, even if they weren’t beverages. Today, whether we call it chocolat (French), čokoláda (Czech), shokolad (Hebrew), or chokolid (Korean), we’re enjoying an item grown and produced by Indigenous Americans thousands of years ago.
Coffee
This delicious caffeinated beverage first appeared in Yemen around the 15th century. One early name for the drink — qahwah — comes from the Sufi Muslims of Mocha. It is derived from a longer phrase that means “wine of the bean.” There are several accounts from different Europeans who encountered a dark, hot beverage in the Middle East around the late 16th century, and the spellings for the drink include “chaube,” “cavee” “caova,” and “cahue.” By the 18th century, coffee was part of Europeans’ everyday life.
The term “coffee” eventually became the standard spelling for the drink in English circles, and other languages adopted similar phonetics. From the French café and the German Kaffee to the Hindi kofee and Afrikaans koh-fee, the word has stayed remarkably similar across the globe.
Pineapple
While many world languages refer to this tropical fruit as ananas, in English, it’s a pineapple. The fruit was first called nanas (which meant “excellent fruit”) by the South American Indigenous Tupi-Guaraní people. European explorers came across the fruit in the late 1400s and called it a pineapple, because they thought it resembled a pinecone.
Today, the fruit is called a pineapple in English, piña in Spanish, and pinya in Tagalog. However, many more languages use the Tupi version — including French (l’ananas), Swedish (ananas), and German (Ananas).
Taxi
Being the most recently coined word on this list has helped “taxi” become more widely adopted across the planet. Horse-drawn carriages for hire were ferrying passengers around London as early as 1605, but the word “taxicab” is a late-19th-century invention. With the advent of gas-powered cars (cabs) came a need to measure the distance and the fare. The device to do that was called a taximeter, taken from the French taxe (“tariff”) and mètre (“measuring”). The taximeter monitored the rides of taxicabs, which soon became shortened to just “taxis.” Today, more than 20 languages use some version of the word “taxi,” making it easier for travelers everywhere to hail a ride.
Tea
For the most part, two versions of the word “tea” are used worldwide, and we would recognize both in English. One is a variation of “tea,” and the other is a version of the word “chai,” from Hindi. Both terms come from China, where these goods originated hundreds of years ago.
According to some linguists, the “tea” versions are used in countries where traders would have traveled by sea to bring the beverage to locals, such as England (“tea”), Italy (tè), and the Netherlands (thee). The “chai” variations are popular in areas where the leaves would have come via the Silk Road, such as Korea (cha), India (chay), Russia (chay), and Arab countries (shay).
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Much like there’s no consensus on the perfect way to cook a steak (I’ll take mine rare) or the best hot dog toppings (mustard and sauerkraut, obviously), there are some idioms that lack any sort of universally accepted origin story. “To a tee,” which dates back to the late 17th century, is widely understood to mean “executing something exactly or impeccably,” but the etymological debate rages on over the phrase’s precise origins.
Some claim that this idiom comes from sports, either the idea of aiming at the tee line in the winter sport of curling or the image of a golf tee. Others say it has to do with a drafting tool called a T-square, which is used by carpenters and architects for drawing crisp lines on perfect angles. But according to the Oxford English Dictionary, those options have been researched to the point that they’re largely regarded as untenable.
Of all the purported theories, the most likely connects “to a tee” to the concept of a tittle — a noun defined as “a tiny part of something.” While a tittle can describe any small part, traditionally it’s used for the little dot found atop a lowercase “i” or “j.” What makes this theory so reputable is that the phrase “to a tittle” predates “to a tee” by nearly a century, though both are used in similar contexts.
“To a tittle” appears in a 1607 play written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, in the line, “I’ll quote him to a tittle.” The implication here is “to get the quote exactly right,” much like “to a tee” means “to adhere to small detail.” It’s believed that “tittle” was shortened to a simple “tee” sound in speech over the ensuing decades, and in 1693, a version of “to a T” appeared in a satire by James Wright. People went on to use the variations “to a T” and “to a tee” interchangeably, though “to a tee” became the more common spelling by the 20th century.
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Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. While that concept is true in physics, there’s no “Webster’s law” insisting that each word has an equal and opposite term. In fact, there are plenty of unpaired words in English. One of the most confusing to be without an opposite is “nonplussed.”
“Nonplussed” is an adjective that describes a person who is so surprised or confused by a situation that they don’t know how to respond. “To be nonplussed” is often used to mean to be at a loss for words, for example. It’s easy to assume the “non-” acts as a negating prefix, as in the words “noncommittal” or “nonexistent,” but that linguistic principle doesn’t apply to “nonplussed.” While you can find “existent” (meaning “having reality or existence”) in the dictionary, you won’t find “plussed.”“Non” isn’t a prefix at all in the case of “nonplussed.” It’s not meant to negate another term; instead, it comes directly from the Latin non plus, which translates to “no more.” “Nonchalant” and “disgruntled” follow a similar pattern — one cannot be simply “chalant.” (“Gruntled” is found in some dictionaries, but it was created as a backformation in the 1930s to mean “pleased, contented,” serving as the opposite to “disgruntled.”)
However, things have gotten more complicated in recent decades with “nonplussed.” While the usage of “being so shocked they don’t know how to respond” has been in English since the 1600s, around the 1960s the word began to be used in American English in the exact opposite way. People began to use “nonplussed” to describe someone who was unperturbed — essentially making “nonplussed” an antonym of itself, as it can describe someone who’s startled or relaxed. The latter isn’t considered standard usage, but it is growing in popularity. So, while there’s no “plussed,” “nonplussed” has evolved into a redundancy to fill that void.
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If you frequently use emojis 👋, you know there are times when it’s a struggle 😭 to find the perfect image. For all the ❤️and 👍we use daily, sometimes you’re left scratching your head 🤔and settling for a lackluster emoji that only half describes how you feel 🤦♂️.
Thankfully, much like the word-based English language, the world of emojis is evolving, with new emojis added regularly 🎉. While device companies and various platforms (Facebook, Google, etc.) decide how each emoji appears on their network, Unicode, an international committee responsible for computing standards, decides exactly which icons make up the emoji keyboard. So if anyone from Unicode is listening, here are 10 emojis we’d like to see on the next big update 🙏.
Acoustic Guitar
While it’s fun to bop your head and rock out from time to time, not every song requires the intensity of an electric guitar (an emoji that already exists 🎸). It would benefit us all to have access to an acoustic guitar emoji, which is far more appropriate for those mellow numbers — please reference the Ken sing-along in the Barbie movie. The truth is that the musical instrument options are lacking in general, and we could stand to add a banjo, an accordion, or perhaps bagpipes.
Iced Coffee
Some people love iced coffee year-round, but they have to settle for sending the Hot Beverage ☕ emoji, depicting a steaming cup. Think about it: If you text a hot coffee to your friend, they may think you want to sit down at a cafe and chat. But a tall iced coffee emoji says, “Let’s walk through the park and catch up, chilly treat in hand.”
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Dumpster Fire
Sending someone a Fire 🔥 emoji may mean that you think something is really cool — the exact opposite of a dumpster fire, which suggests disaster. Unfortunately, we only have separate Wastebasket 🗑️ and Fire 🔥 emojis. You can send the familiar “This is fine” meme in a pinch, but it would be nice to have a go-to emoji for those situations when everything goes awry.
Multiple Balloons
A single red balloon evokes images of the evil clown Pennywise from It — not a birthday bash — and yet 🎈 is the only balloon emoji currently available. A bunch of balloons in festive colors, on the other hand, alongside the party popper and cake emojis, shouts “celebration.”
Angsty Teenager
Is your child or grandchild in an angsty stage of life? Perhaps it’s just a phase, but it’s one that could be capitalized on by adding an angsty teen emoji. Maybe it could be an expressionless yellow smiley emoji with a goth-style haircut, or a more realistic teenage face rolling their eyes.
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Gingerbread Person
Few symbols are more evocative of the holiday season than gingerbread people, but a gingerbread cookie doesn’t exist on the emoji keyboard (yet). The standard Cookie 🍪looks like a chocolate chip cookie, and the other option is a Fortune Cookie 🥠. While we’re requesting sweets, we could use a candy cane emoji, too, as both would help brighten up texting during the holiday season.
Mic Drop
Plenty of situations call for a mic drop — the end of an opinionated venting session, the perfect quip, a snappy retort. The Microphone emoji 🎤 exists, but we need some motion added to it, similar to how the Speaker Loud Volume emoji 🔊 demonstrates the levels of sound. A mic drop emoji has the potential to become one of the most used and popular emojis among texters who need some added emphasis.
As far as cheese emojis, we have a hunk of unmelted Cheese Wedge 🧀 and then a sophisticated pot of Fondue 🫕. A grilled cheese emoji would be perfect for texting a friend about a late-night craving or those nights when you get home from work and can’t be bothered to cook anything more complex.
U.S. State Flags
The Stars and Stripes are represented by an emoji 🇺🇸, but it would be nice if we could display some home state pride as well. There are flags for almost every world nation, so maybe the flags of the individual U.S. states will be added at some point, too.
Do you have any emoji ideas you’d like to see become a reality? Let us know, and maybe we’ll submit a proposal to Unicode for an emoji the WordSmarts community would like to add to the emoji keyboard.
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The culinary world is full of strange hybrids such as turducken, sushirritos, and cronuts. You would be forgiven for thinking “eggcorn” falls into this category, too, but as far as we know, you won’t find any movie theaters selling buckets of popcorn topped with scrambled eggs. Instead, “eggcorn” is a linguistic term, used specifically to designate words and phrases that come about due to mishearing or misinterpreting another word or phrase.
One common eggcorn is “all intensive purposes,” which people incorrectly hear instead of “all intents and purposes.” There’s also “duck tape” for “duct tape,” “pre-Madonna” for “prima donna,” and “doggy dog world” rather than “dog-eat-dog world.” In all of these examples, the first version is a misinterpretation of the correct second version, making the former an erroneous eggcorn.
Of course, “eggcorn” is an eggcorn itself — specifically a misinterpretation of the word “acorn.” The Oxford English Dictionary considers the earliest presentation of “eggcorn” in an 1844 letter from S. G. McMahan, who wrote, “I hope you are as harty as you ust to be and that you have plenty of egg corn [acorn] bread.” This example isn’t from a renowned scholar or in famous literature, but 159 years later, it caught the attention of University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman.
In a 2003 blog post, Liberman discussed mistaking “acorns” for “egg corns” for the first time in an academic sense. He wondered if there was a word to describe the situation, ultimately determining that extant words like “malapropism” or “mondegreen” weren’t accurate. At the suggestion of a friend, Liberman proposed “egg corn” as a new term for these situations, given the misinterpretation was unique in itself. The term had been adopted as the one-word “eggcorn” and was used in a Boston Globe article about misheard Shakespeare references by 2004 — proving the right word will quickly fill a void.
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“Eat your heart out” isn’t just a great advertising slogan for an all-you-can-eat buffet. It’s also a phrase most commonly used in a boastful manner to induce feelings of envy, regret, and other similar emotions. If someone tells you to eat your heart out, they might be lauding an accomplishment over your head. For instance, maybe you expressed some doubt they would get a promotion at work, and they want to brag a bit. As to why the heart was chosen out of all the organs for this phrase, perhaps it’s because our hearts are so deeply intertwined with passion and emotions, unlike the kidneys or skin, for example.
The phrase’s origins can purportedly be traced back to the Iliad, an ancient Greek epic likely written in the mid-sixth century BCE. Translations of this work — including this example from English professor Michael Delahoyde — depict characters metaphorically eating their heart out in a state of grief. In another translation, Bellerophontes is called out specifically: “But after Bellerophontes was hated by all the immortals, he wandered alone about the plain of Aleios (Aleus), eating his heart out, skulking aside from the trodden track of humanity.” But these are modern interpretations of an ancient epic, and so it’s important to understand that the phrase wasn’t written verbatim in the original ancient Greek.
Much later, around the 16th century, “eat your/one’s heart out” became a widely used metaphor. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, one of the earliest uses appears in a circa 1532 translation of the Hellenistic Greek phrase “μὴ ἐσθίειν καρδίαν,” which essentially translates to “eat no heart.” It wasn’t long before the phrase evolved into the modern taunt.
“Eat your heart out” can be expressed in a lighthearted and satirical manner. If someone is hamming it up while filming a home movie, they might say “eat your heart out, Steven Spielberg.” They’re not talking to Steven himself but rather making fun of the situation and pretending to be a serious actor. While it does have ancient metaphorical origins, choose carefully whether you use “eat your heart out” satirically or as a taunt, as it can leave a negative impression.
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While this phrase has a metaphorical usage, it also has a literal placement on the lunar calendar. Unfortunately, the frequency of the blue moon is also up for interpretation.
The earliest documented mentions of “blue moon” — dating to the 16th century — suggested something was impossible because the idea of the orb in the sky being blue was outright absurd. Now the idiom “once in a blue moon” refers to an event that rarely happens, and as of the 20th century, a blue moon on the lunar calendar happens every two to three years.
In an astronomical sense, a more apt term might be “bonus moon,” because the color blue has little to do with it. Today, “blue moon” refers to one of two different lunar events: the third full moon of a season that contains four full moons or the second full moon in a calendar month. We can credit the Farmers’ Almanac for the first interpretation. This folksy guide follows a tropical year calendar, measured from one winter solstice (December 21) to the next. There are almost always 12 full moons per year — three per season. But every once in a while, four full moons occur in a single season. In the 19th century, the Farmers’ Almanac began recognizing a blue moon as the third full moon during a season that had four. Why the third full moon? The last full moons in each season already had designated names, such as June’s Strawberry Moon.
The second definition of “blue moon” — meaning the second full moon in a single month — is the result of an accidental oversimplification of the Farmers’ Almanac rule printed in a 1946 issue of Sky and Telescope magazine. This categorization of “blue moon” is more common. The next monthly blue moon is expected on May 31, 2026. The next seasonal blue moon will happen on August 21, 2032, according to Space.com.
If a (somewhat) rare blue moon isn’t blue in color, though, why is it called as such? This is still a linguistic mystery. One theory proposes a misunderstanding of the Old English word belewe, meaning “betray.” Another suggests someone misheard the French la deux lune, meaning “double moon,” and yet another offers that the second full moon in the month was called “blue” in the Czech language.
The next time someone suggests something happens “once in a blue moon,” you might want to ask them to be more specific about how often that occurs.
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Writing tip: Readers are more likely to grasp simpler concepts at the beginning of a sentence. Use the concept of sentence weight to reserve the complex ideas for the end.
Ever wonder why certain sentences just click? Take, for instance, the final line of The Count of Monte Cristo, “Until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, — ‘Wait and hope.'” Notice how the emphasis falls on the end of the sentence. This is a prime example of effective sentence weight. Rearranging the line stifles its impact: “All human wisdom is contained in these two words — ‘Wait and hope’ — until the day when God will deign to reveal the future to man.”
To understand sentence weight, imagine your sentence spanning across a seesaw. English speakers instinctively favor the “heaviest” or most complex part of the sentence on the right side, or at the end of the sentence, and simpler, more digestible elements at the beginning. This concept, sometimes called “end-weight,” appeared in Lindley Murray’s 1795 book English Grammar, which served as the template for grade-school grammar lessons for centuries.
Longer or complex phrases (such as prepositional phrases) inherently carry more weight than simpler clauses. Excessive complexity at the start can confuse or disengage the reader. The sentence, “It was thoughtful of Mary to send me a card for my birthday,” sounds better than, “For Mary to send me a card for my birthday was thoughtful.” Linguists have tested pairings of this nature, and the audience always prefers the heavier end-weight structure. The latter feels awkward because the weighty idea comes too early and is distracting.
This is a valuable tool for writers. Consider this line from The Great Gatsby: “In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.” Placing this line on the metaphorical seesaw would undoubtedly cause the right side to plummet to the ground — the end of the sentence is heavy with vivid and complex imagery.
While the “rules” of sentence weight provide guidance, they are by no means rigid. English syntax allows flexibility, and sentence structure can be altered for stylistic effect. When in doubt, consider your seesaw. Weightier ideas typically belong at the end, anchoring the sentence with their emphasis.
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