May 2013
33 posts
Wonderful Words With No English Equivalent
Sometimes we must turn to other languages to find le mot juste. Here are a whole bunch of foreign words with no direct English equivalent.
1. Kummerspeck (German) Excess weight gained from emotional overeating. Literally, grief bacon.
2. Shemomedjamo (Georgian) You know when you’re really full, but your meal is just so delicious, you can’t stop eating it? The Georgians feel your pain. This...
Is the Government Reading Your Email?
In an excerpt from their new book, D.B. Grady and Marc Ambinder offer 13 ways to tell whether the government is sniffing around your inbox.
Last Week's Most Popular Stories
In case you weren’t obsessively refreshing mentalfloss.com all week, here’s what you missed…
1. 10 Hotel Secrets From Behind the Front Desk * 2. 10 Facial Reconstructions of Famous Historical Figures * 3. 11 Baby Naming Trends From the Past * 4. 11 Discontinued Beverages from Your Youth * 5. 11 Things That Make You a Bad Driver * 6. 11 Songs That Brought People Out of...
11 Strange Movie Job Titles—Explained!
Here’s what the key grip, best boy, and gaffer actually do, plus the origins of all those titles.
5 Extremely Emo Scientific Phenomena
1. The Moth That Drinks Tears of Sleeping Birds
10 Hotel Secrets from Behind the Front Desk
Jacob Tomsky has worked on the front lines of hotels for more than a decade, and he has some hospitality secrets to spill.
Today on mentalfloss.com...
11 Songs That Brought People Out of Comas * 11 Patron Saints of Food, Coffee and Alcohol * 11 TV Theme Songs That Tell the Back Story * 11 Things That Make You a Bad Driver * 11 Discontinued Beverages From Your Youth * 11 of the Best-Loved Regional Candies * 11 Unusually Shaped Coins * 11 Movies You Might Not Know Were Based on Comic Books * 11 Embarrassing Incidents Caused by Mascots *...
Today on mentalfloss.com...
On the 11th of every month, we post a bunch of 11 lists. Unless the 11th falls on a weekend. In those months, we push the party back a couple days. Here’s what’s happened so far today:
11 Movies You Might Not Know Were Based on Comic Books * 11 Embarrassing Incidents Caused by Mascots * Beyond the Palindrome! 11 Names for Spelling Quirks and Word Oddities * 11 Personalized Maps of...
Last Week's Most Popular Stories on...
1. The Founder of Mother’s Day Later Fought to Have It Abolished, by Jonathan Mulinix * 2. 15 Famous People Who Used to Teach, by Ethan Trex * 3. The Origins of 8 Curious Body Part Names, by Judith B. Herman * 4. 7 Jobs We’re Glad Are Obsolete, by Therese Oneill * 5. 10 Contestants for Earth’s Next Superpower, by Jeff Wilser * 6. 15 Less-than-Inspirational Quotes from a Book of...
Last Week's Most Popular Stories
In case you weren’t obsessively refreshing mentalfloss.com all week, here’s what you missed.
1. 8 Symbols That We Turned Into Words, by Arika Okrent * 2. The 10 Best-Selling Infomercial Products, by Jennifer M. Wood * 3. 17 Web Toys for Your Procrastination Pleasure, by Miss Cellania * 4. 6 Movies That Were Almost Other Movies, by Rick Marshall * 5. Plight of the Living Dead: 10 Case...
Sometimes You Need a Break
17 Web Toys for Your Procrastination Pleasure
Our Top 15 Stories in April
1. 14 Words That Are Their Own Opposites * 2. 10 Movies Roger Ebert Really Hated * 3. 20 Things You Might Not Know About Jurassic Park * 4. 8 Things You Might Not Know About Nutella * 5. Kim Jong-un’s Less Responsible, Disney-Obsessed Older Brother * 6. The Faces Behind 31 Disney Villains * 7. 11 Hit Songs Originally Intended for Other Artists * 8. How to Converse Properly: 18 Tips From Old...
April 2013
59 posts
7 Ways You Could Tell That AP Tweet Was Fake
Grab your red pens and AP Style Guides and let’s do this.
Happy Talk Like Shakespeare Day!
Here are 20 of the many words he added to your vocabulary.
Last Week's Most Popular Stories
1. Where Are They Now? 8 Things That Terrified Us in the ’90s, by Matt Soniak * 2. 5 Americans Who Defected to North Korea, by D.B. Grady * 3. 10 Words That Will Win You Any Game of Scrabble, by Jennifer M. Wood * 4. 9 Extremely Pretentious Latin and Greek Plurals, by Arika Okrent * 5. Don’t Change a Thing: 8 Inventions That Never Needed, by Therese Oneill * 6. Look for the...
5 Pairs of Countries That Americans Confuse
Last Friday, a flurry of social media activity mistakenly identified the Boston bombing suspects as having a Czech, rather than Chechen, background. The Czech ambassador to the US issued a statement clarifying that “the Czech Republic and Chechnya are two very different entities—the Czech Republic is a Central European country; Chechnya is a part of the Russian Federation.”
Here are...
9 Extremely Pretentious Latin and Greek Plurals
Here are some uncommon but etymologically sound plurals that you may employ for petty pedantry at your own risk.
Look for the Helpers: 10 Heroes of the Boston...
Getty Images
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” —Mister Rogers
In the midst of the carnage following the explosions at the finish line of the Boston Marathon yesterday, people came together to do what they could, even when it put them in danger. Here...
