A Forest Language Hannah Fries's lexicon of 61 words for how trees live
Reviews
I just chose words carefully A Super Metroid guide from the dial-up years, fully justified in monospace by rewriting every line until it fit
Weird Love Sixty-year-old romance comics reprinted straight, including 'I Fell for a Commie'
DUCKS A solo-animated park stroll that has quietly picked up nine festival prizes since 2025
Live at the Necropolis: Lords of Synth Three synth lords save Earth from Halley's Comet, judged on sheer coolness
Tironian Notes Cicero's secretary invented shorthand, and Dublin still parks by it
The Moist Towelette Online Museum A decades-old shrine to vintage moist-towelette packaging, still adding to the shelves
Finds
- Raisin Awareness A dad joke
- "My Ignorance Is Just as Good as Your Knowledge" It is Asimov's, from Newsweek in 1980
- Zazzy Flashy, colorful, or stylish
- Two Counts A dad joke
- Spizzerinctum Energy, courage, and determination
- Towers of Babble A word game where every word you spell becomes a tower
- The Batroom A dad joke
- Zillionaire A person with incalculably enormous wealth
- Greatest Hits A dad joke
- A Little Shaken A dad joke
- Mundo Mendo, Book Two A year of a website, printed as a numbered, signed pocket book
- Too Much on My Plate A dad joke
- Irrupt To burst or break in
- Life Is Like a Roll of Toilet Paper The folksy line about time speeding up, usually pinned on Andy Rooney, traced to an anonymous quip in a 1985 Jacksonville column.
- Dying to Get In A dad joke
- Exute To strip or deprive of something
- Little Plaque A dad joke
- Wheal A small raised swelling on the skin
- Wonderhop A daily word game where the goal is the most common answer, or the rarest
- All the Percent Every percentage spoken on Star Trek: TNG, in one supercut
- Calender A machine that presses sheets between rollers
- Pointless A dad joke
- Sneakers A dad joke
- Life Without Love Is Like a Sunless Garden When the Flowers Are Dead Credited to Oscar Wilde, but the line surfaces only in 1949, nearly fifty years after his death
- Venust Beautiful, graceful, elegant
- Crossword Clues Where It's Clear the Puzzle's Creator Got Themselves into a Jam Letter-wise Tyler Gooch on the clues a stuck puzzle-maker writes
- Six Months Each A dad joke
- It Deep Ends A dad joke
- Seven Up A dad joke
- Letterkin A daily puzzle that scores you on how few different letters you use
- Voracity Veracity's one-letter twin asks whether there's more, not whether it's true
- Wordminos A word game where lettered domino pieces must spell every row and column
- But We Had Music Nick Cave reads Maria Popova's poem, animated by Daniel Bruson
- Bedtime A dad joke
- There Will Never Be a Robot, a Tireless Mechanism Performing All the Functions of a Man A 1927 New York Times science writer called robots impossible, and Chesterton doubted a robot schoolmaster
- Go a Little Out of Your Depth David Bowie's creative credo, from a 1997 interview
- Calque A word built by translating another language's parts
- Archaeology A dad joke
- Nietzsche on Walking The philosopher who thought outdoors, ten hours a day
- The Importance of Being Scared Wisława Szymborska on why Andersen's frightening fairy tales were right
- Capybara Court Tiny disputes, settled by a capybara judge
- Against Brute Force D.H. Lawrence on the daisy outlasting the Pyramids
- Hoover A dad joke
- What Makes a Good Person Dostoyevsky, in a Siberian letter, on a friend who was saddened where others raged
- Ideocracy Rule by ideas, one letter away from rule by idiots
- Les Fo'Plafonds Play The Simpsons Danny Elfman's theme, played on bicycle pumps, pots and a steam iron
- Heaven Help America When She Loses Faith in Slogans Sir Josiah Stamp said it in 1932, with the Depression as his backdrop
- How many apples grow on a tree A dad joke
- Fastest growing city A dad joke
- Art Is Born of Constraint, Lives by Struggle, and Dies of Freedom André Gide said it in 1904, citing a flaw in Michelangelo's marble
- The Day Came When the Risk to Remain Tight in a Bud The line everyone credits to Anaïs Nin has no evidence behind it
- Wedding cake A dad joke
- Lobster is Lobster A word game where you guess the language
- Veracity Truthfulness or accuracy, and something true
- Cross-eyed teacher A dad joke
- Venous Why veins look blue when venous blood is dark red
- Casque A helmet you grow yourself, on record since before 1586
- Meeting like this A dad joke
- Androgynous Having both — or neither — on record since 1628
- Sore arms A dad joke
- A Fsh A dad joke
- Idiocracy Government by idiots — a word that predates the film by 39 years
- Batman/Superman/Weird Al: World's Weirdest A 40-page DC one-shot where Weird Al saves the multiverse from dullness
- Lots of Training A dad joke
- Choreoglyphs Type a word, watch the invisible swipe-keyboard gesture that would draw it
- Incomplete A dad joke
- Cantaloupe A dad joke
- Kikkerland AI Decision Maker Shake this shrunken retro computer for one of twenty stock answers
- obtuse The barracuda named for its blunt gill cover
- Blessed Are the Cracked, for They Shall Let in the Light Credited to Groucho Marx and Spike Milligan, but traced to a Dr. Parr in 1830
- Jarring A dad joke
- kidology How Holyfield's trainer lied about the clock
- Sunday School A dad joke
- timorous Russia's railway chief on why the fast trains stayed away from Finland
- Can't Put It Down A dad joke
- misgiving On exam day in Korea, air-traffic control holds every takeoff for the listening section
- Paint Chip Poetry Four hundred paint-chip cards, and the poem is in the colour names
- André Gregory's Letter to Richard Avedon Choosing the life that the work grows out of
- Sage Advice A dad joke
- Edward Abbey's Confessions of a Barbarian How not to die, and the promise that you'll outlive the bastards
- Judge Jev All shapes are innocent until proven guilty
- soporiferous A sermon so sleep-inducing that the preacher had to shriek
- Cooked in Greece A dad joke
- KillSwitch A programming language whose function-call keyword is 'ignore previous instructions'
- A Whim Away A dad joke
- Updated Jane Austen Titles The whole shelf, retitled in the dialect of right now
- A Study in Procrastination A dad joke
- decedent One Latin root away from decadent, and both words met in the same will
- It Is Impossible To Make Anything Foolproof Because Fools Are So Ingenious J. R. Williams drew it in a 1942 comic strip, fifty years before Douglas Adams got the credit
- It's About Tine A dad joke
- mordent The word for a musical bite, which cannot stop biting its own spelling
- The Genius Logic of the NATO Phonetic Alphabet It isn't phonetic, and NATO didn't invent it
- Restarted A full fake startup, generated fresh on every reload
- Toaster vs. Freezer: Which Would Win? A 162-second answer to a podcast argument
- A Hunch About the Layoffs A dad joke
- Rosery A garden given over to roses — and the reason prayer beads are named after them
- The Baa-Baa Shop A dad joke
- Villein The villein worked a plot; the villain plotted
- Annie Murphy Paul on Thinking Outside the Brain On the mind as a magpie — thought assembled from whatever the world has to offer.
- A Female Snake A dad joke
- Evert To turn inside out — as sea stars do with their stomachs
- I Don't Know Y A dad joke
- Fernando Pessoa on Being Tourists of Ourselves On the difference between visiting yourself and exploring yourself.
- Championship Gurning Pull the ugliest face you can into your webcam and the site hands out medals
- Nice Jester A dad joke
- I just chose words carefully A 17,000-word Super Metroid guide, fully justified in monospace by rewriting every line
- Breviloquent A twelve-letter, four-syllable word for using few words
- Cellophane A dad joke
- Too Far Out A dad joke
- Macilent One adjective for a thin man and a thin argument, on the books since before 1425
- Quacks Are the Greatest Liars in the World, Except Their Patients Franklin said it to Rush in 1788, and flagged it as somebody else's line
- Press Your Luck A dad joke
- Modern Day Typographer Elle Cordova sings the history of typefaces to Gilbert and Sullivan
- How Not to Waste Your Wildness Jay Griffiths on wildness as something no market can touch
- Ma The Japanese concept of interval as an antidote to certainty
- Nidorous An adjective for burnt-meat stench that's been on the books since 1626
- Weird Love 160 pages of dead-serious romance comics from the 1950s to the early '70s
- Egg-cercise A dad joke
- Erich Fromm's Rules of Listening Six guidelines from a psychoanalyst who compared listening to reading poetry
- HN Titles Rewrite a flop headline, then judge yourself against the one that won
- The Most Common Way People Give Up Their Power Credited to Alice Walker since 1999 — and no one else has a stronger claim
- Rorid An adjective for dewy that's been waiting since 1425
- Tove Jansson's Letters to Tuulikki The Moomin creator's love letters to the woman who became Too-ticky
- Bertrand Russell's Response to Oswald Mosley Declining to debate a fascist, months before turning ninety
- A Sandwich, Poof A dad joke
- DUCKS An animated short about very normal ducks, until they aren't
- INXS But It's David Bowie Need You Tonight, sung as Let's Dance-era Bowie
- Live at the Necropolis: Lords of Synth Three synth lords save Earth from Halley's Comet, judged on sheer coolness
- An Alligator in a Vest A dad joke
- Intellectual Things Stanley Kunitz's 1930 debut, just entered the public domain
- cowhearted Coward is all tail and no cow
- Not Today, Murder A rubber duck, spray cheese, a stapler, and a killer clown
- Wisława Szymborska's Nobel Speech Inspiration is born from a continuous "I don't know"
- Corporate Mind Games Daily puzzles about the parts of work nobody puts on a résumé
- But I changed my mind I was going to get a brain transplant.
- moth-wing Fragile or fleeting — and a noun for the thing itself
- Sometimes they need to draw blood Why do nurses carry around red crayons?
- Birds by Brian Wildsmith The medieval nun who named bird flocks, painted five centuries later
- stickybeak Nose becomes beak, and the word gets better
- Break 5 A word ladder you can finish inside a coffee break
- dogleg Named for the angle in a dog's hind leg
- You get what you deserve Today's dad joke
- I'm the Guy Who Destroys Antique Books Twelve searchable megabytes and a manageable quantity of paper strips
- A World Market for About Five Computers The most-quoted bad prediction in computing has no source
- Rotation of Earth Joke A dad joke that gets its whole effect from one idiom being literally true.
- Chumocracy Rule by the people you already know
- Magic Tractor Joke A pun that hides in the word 'turned' until the last two words.
- bury.lol A permanent headstone for the project you finally admitted was dead
- Super calloused fragile mystic The longest walk to a pun on record
- Obganiate To annoy someone by saying the same thing again. And again.
- POSIWID The purpose of a system is what it does
- Too-Ticky on uncertainty "All things are so very uncertain, and that's exactly what makes me feel reassured"
- The Book of Human Emotions Words for feelings English never got around to naming
- Nobody raises an eyebrow Cosmetic surgery used to be such a taboo subject.
- Meat proxy A word for the person who only forwards it
- Ophidiophobia An abnormal fear of snakes, and two puns about it
- Ten Thousand A short film that measures a life in four-minute units
- Nep-tunes What kind of music do planets listen to?
- All true stories end in death Hemingway wrote a longer, better sentence
- Solivagant A word for wandering alone, in writing since 1621
- The Cryptic Cryptid Crossword A 15x15 grid where every answer is a monster
- It ain’t bragging if you can do it Dizzy Dean said something slower and better
- Grrrrrainnnnnssss What do vegetarian zombies eat?
- gangway A word that says "way" twice
- Right behind you Today's dad joke
- concomitance A word that arrives accompanied by its own companion
- One or two Changing a light bulb at the optometrist's
- I find ecstasy in living Emily Dickinson said it out loud; a 1940 anthology turned it into a letter
- hapchance Luck luck — English decided one word for good fortune wasn't enough
- A complete guess The ninth letter of the alphabet
- Beeswax Five spoken words a day, and one wrong letter ends the run
- circumambient A word that goes around, and then goes around again
- He be lion Why did the feline fail the lie detector test?
- The shoeshine boy and the stock market Wall Street's favourite exit signal, traced to a book from 1959
- Tironian Notes Cicero's secretary invented shorthand, and one of his symbols is still in Unicode
- Mark Twain's "From The 'London Times' in 1904" An 1898 short story in which a condemned man is saved by a video call
- The Gävle Goat A 43-foot straw goat that has survived Christmas only 17 times since 1966
- The gorilla wearing headphones A naming-convention pun that refuses to be one
- Mollie the Hamster's Strava A hamster wheel wired to auto-upload its runs to Strava
- Pismire The word for an ant, from urine and mire
- Widthipedia Wikipedia, except the article is chosen by your window's width
- Mordant The word for a cutting remark is also the chemical that bites into the plate
- “When People Show You Who They Are, Believe Them” Traced to a Wellesley commencement stage in May 1997
- Corbel The bracket that lets a wall hold something it isn't under
- Never came to a full stop A punctuation joke that also passes as a driving joke
- Mass confusion Americans can't switch from pounds to kilograms overnight.
- Skirr The searching and the sound the searching makes
- They have nobody to go with Why don't skeletons ever go trick or treating?
- Rapture To seize, and to be seized
- Assart One word for the field and for the clearing of it
- They always quack the case Why do ducks make great detectives?
- When the bird and the book disagree A birdwatcher's proverb that Audubon never said
- In the riverbank Where do fish keep their money?
- Jean Piaget on the Adult in Every Child From The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932)
- graffiti.moe A public graffiti wall you spray from the browser and curl from the terminal
- The only known instance of a nick nack paddy wack A doll was recently found dead in a rice paddy.
- S-Bahn Seat Picker A browser game about the unwritten rules of train seating
- dowfart The rudest-looking word that isn't
- They will break up too soon Why can't eggs have love?
- Don't just do something. Sit there. Widely credited to Thich Nhat Hanh; first found in 1954, as orders written for men stationed alone on radar platforms at sea.
- Banana For Scale Ruler The internet's unit of measurement, standardised
- bumbaze To bewilder or stupefy
- It was framed Why was the picture sent to prison?
- LarpIn LinkedIn, with everyone finally admitting it
- No individual raindrop ever considers itself responsible for the flood Credited to Ruskin and to Douglas Adams; actually Sydney J. Harris
- Crotchet The etymological twin of crochet, and no relation to the word you're hearing
- I'm a cashew! What did one nut say as he chased another nut?
- Project ESPAÑOL Ten thousand Spanish poems, sorted by the verb tenses you've learned
- sixwhyo A code reviewer who just keeps asking why
- Ground beef What do you call a cow with no legs?
- Translator of Original 'Minions' Epic Poem Slams Film Adaptation The Onion invents a Minions epic poem and a translator with opinions about the film — and the actual translator of the Odyssey answered.
- Disannul A prefix that agrees with itself instead of reversing
- Between us, something smells What did the left eye say to the right eye?
- Samuel Johnson on Concentration The most quoted line about focus was cover for a forgery
- European Country Names Explained One of them means land of the rabbits
- How do you fix a broken pizza? How do you fix a broken pizza? With tomato paste.
- Withsay The 'with' in it means against
- Etymologue Word origins you can walk forwards as well as back
- Can February march? A dad joke from icanhazdadjoke: two months doubling as verbs, in a single seven-word exchange.
- Misdoubt A prefix that reinforces instead of reversing
- Marcel Duchamp on contradicting yourself Taste is a rut, and the way out is to disagree with yourself
- Antipelargy A word for the care children return to their parents
- The Eight-Character Password A pun about counting the characters in a password requirement.
- Amelia Earhart on the cake bakers A 1932 award speech that turned a backhanded compliment into a rebuttal
- Elevator Joke A dad joke with its own rise and fall
- Bellwether The sheep that named the trend
- Glue Stick Joke A marital mix-up over makeup
- Milk in a Bag Joke One dad's stance on grocery bagging
- Pumpkin Patch Joke The fix for a damaged jack-o'-lantern
- Expiscate To fish out — the verb for finding something by patient investigation
- Framed Picture Joke A four-word punchline that gets a picture convicted.
- Against the Grain Joke A dad joke that puts a dead idiom back next to its own ingredients.
- The People Have Spoken — The Bastards The best concession speech in American politics, possibly never conceded
- Ettercap The Old English word for spider, still the best insult for a gossip
- Coffee Mugged Joke A dad joke where the crime and the container turn out to be the same word.
- Lean Beef Joke A dad joke that turns a butcher's grading term into a description of posture.
- Auspicate To begin an undertaking is, etymologically, to birdwatch first
- My Days Are Numbered Joke A dad joke about numbered days — a doctor's ominous idiom answered with a calendar's literal truth.
- Cormac McCarthy on Shaping the World to Our Convenience From Cities of the Plain, closing the Border Trilogy
- Regularly A new set of handcrafted puzzles every morning
- Ghost fashion The dad joke about what ghosts wear on laundry day.
- The Karma café The dad joke about the restaurant with no menu.
- Be like a headland Marcus Aurelius, in Meditations, on why bearing hardship valiantly is itself a form of good luck.
- The books nobody reads Mark Twain, in an 1906 letter to General Frederick D. Grant, on why lecture audiences never notice he's repeating himself.
- The 11:11 wish Making a midnight wish for timely repairs.
- An esteemed colleague A scientist's most heated partnership.
- Fresh prints Tracking down the Fresh Prince in winter weather.
- German kinder A lesson in comparative kindness.
- Keep an ion them Atomic advice for staying responsible.
- Gamy Six unrelated senses, one word — and no relation to '-gamy'
- Aware wolf A dad joke from icanhazdadjoke: a careful wolf is an 'aware wolf' — said aloud, a werewolf pun.
- Feline well A dad joke from icanhazdadjoke: a sick cat isn't 'feline well' — a near-homophone pun on 'feeling.'
- Hands down A dad joke from icanhazdadjoke: 6:30 is the best time on a clock, hands down — literally.
- Thanks for all the sediment A dad joke from icanhazdadjoke: the ocean thanks the beach for all the sediment — a pun on 'sentiment.'
- Shakespeare A dad joke from icanhazdadjoke: a nervous javelin thrower is 'Shakespeare' — his own name literally shakes a spear.
- Noodle One spelling, three unrelated word histories
- Never underestimate the determination of a kid who is time rich and cash poor From his 2008 novel Little Brother, not a stray aphorism
- The bicycle is the most civilized conveyance known to man Confirmed: from her 1965 novel The Red and the Green
- I'm a Believer Joke A one-line pun riffing on the Monkees' "I'm a Believer."
- Cat Meds Joke A one-line pun about a cat's medication.
- Stolen Mixer Joke A one-line pun about a stolen kitchen mixer.
- The Moist Towelette Online Museum A decades-old shrine to vintage moist-towelette packaging, still adding to the shelves
- One More Letter A daily word game that adds one letter each round and rearranges the pile into something new
- Spellsurf Slice, filter, and recombine words by syllable, part of speech, and letter pattern
- Verba Prima Guess the novel from nothing but its opening line
- Broken Hearing Aid Joke A short setup-and-punchline pun about a hearing aid.
- E-Books Are Spineless Joke A one-line pun on e-books and spines.
- Sketchy Courtroom Artist Joke A one-line pun on a courtroom sketch artist.
- Unrealtor Joke A one-line pun on imaginary houses.
- Ariana Venti A dad joke about coffee sizes
- Tutus A dad joke about ballerinas and math
- Fed-Up A dad joke about shipping company mergers
- The 'five-minute conversation' quote isn't Churchill's Quote Investigator finds no trace of it in his writings
- Wole Soyinka on silence A.Word.A.Day's Thought for Today, on his birthday
- Nick Cave on the everyday miracle The everyday human gesture is always a heartbeat away from the miraculous
- Well armed A pun with eight limbs
- Shellfish On crustacean generosity
- 18 Words A daily anagram puzzle with one set of 18 letters and a clock
- Lemonaid A pun about giving a sick lemon 'lemonaid' instead of lemonade.
- Marcel Proust on war War is declared again every morning — and continuing it is its own guilt
- Reptile dysfunction A pun about a chameleon that can't change color, playing on 'reptile dysfunction.'
- Chick-Fil-Eyyy A dad joke from icanhazdadjoke: where Fonzie goes for lunch — Chick-Fil-Eyyy.
- Without a Tres A dad joke from r/dadjokes about a Mexican magician who vanishes 'without a tres.'
- Plethora A dad joke from r/dadjokes: a man's one-word funeral eulogy, 'plethora,' means a lot.
- Rare It Is A dad joke from r/dadjokes: a husband orders his steak done 'like winning an argument with my wife' — rare.
- Not Messi A dad joke from r/dadjokes: why Ronaldo never has to clean his room — because he's not Messi.
- Against the grain A dad joke from icanhazdadjoke about gluten-avoiders 'going against the grain.'
- Bison-tennial A dad joke from r/dadjokes about 200 years of roaming-cattle research landing on 'bison-tennial.'
- Four square meals A dad joke from r/dadjokes where a day of waffles, Cheez-Its, tofu, and brownies adds up to 'four square meals.'
- A satisfactory A dad joke from r/dadjokes turning 'a factory that makes okay products' into 'a satisfactory.'
- June Jordan on being unmistakably alive A standard for a life: live loud enough that your absence registers
- The balloon elephant A dad joke from r/dadjokes that doubles up 'pop' and 'trunk' into one elephant/balloon punchline.
- Affogato A dad joke from r/dadjokes that turns the coffee drink name 'affogato' into 'a-forgot-o.'
- Duck, eggs! A one-panel dad joke from r/dadjokes that turns on whether a farm sign's comma reads as a label or a warning.
- Jacuzzi vs. yakuza A dad joke from r/dadjokes built on the near-homophones 'jacuzzi' and 'yakuza.'
- An orchestrated attack A dad joke from r/dadjokes about being hit by three instruments, with the punchline landing on 'orchestrated.'
- Origami assignment A one-liner from icanhazdadjoke about an origami assignment, playing on 'turned my paper in.'
- Jean de la Fontaine on discretion One trait, two names — depending on who has it
- The explosive alphabet A fruit-alphabet setup with an explosive punchline.
- The shapely food-bank donation A pun about donating country-shaped cookies.
- The vandalized calendar A pun about losing the fifth month of the calendar.
- The Life Savers fortune A pun about the inventor of Life Savers candy.
- The website doctor A pun about the kind of doctor who fixes websites.
- Kenneth Boulding on how things got that way A one-line theory of everything
- Thich Nhat Hanh on deep listening How a broken line of communication gets repaired
- Olga Tokarczuk on tenderness The most modest form of love
- The colorblind diagnosis A groaner about how a colorblindness diagnosis arrived.
- Why horses skip therapy A one-line groaner about why you never see horses in therapy.
- The orchestrated whale attack A groaner about who was behind the whale-watching boat catching fire.
- The wildlife hotline menu A groaner about the phone menu you get when you call the wildlife hotline.
- The 250-year-old yoghurt A groaner about what a yoghurt develops if you leave it alone for 250 years.
- E. E. Cummings on being yourself The hardest battle, and never stopping
- Moritz Goldschmidt on seeing the world The oldest source for a much-misattributed line
- Carl Jung on neurosis and creativity Against the myth of the tortured genius
- Is This Tech Dead? A deadpan registry that scores your favorite tech's Deaditude
- R.I.P. boiled water A brief eulogy for boiled water.
- The Fourth of July beverage A Fourth of July pun about the drink of choice.
- George Washington's poultry counter-espionage A fake history fact about George Washington's chicken-based counter-espionage program.
- Pablo Casals on work as the fountain of youth At 93, still finding life more fascinating
- Boa constructor A wholesome, immediately gettable homophone pun about a snake who builds houses for a living.
- Can I have a bookmark? Eleven years old and he still doesn't know my name
- Orca-stra A one-beat pun about a group of killer whales playing instruments together in an orca-stra.
- Alfred Korzybski on believing vs. doubting Both save us from actually thinking
- Jack London on keeping a notebook Slap into it every stray thought
- Nomido The Browser's daily word game
- Van Gogh on silencing self-doubt Paint all the more, and the voice goes quiet
- Bayo Akomolafe on Obstacles as Creative Hubs On obstacles as the universe's hubs of creativity.
- Mikhail Bakunin on Beethoven's Ninth On art outlasting the world.
- Saul Bellow on Memory On memory as a defense against insignificance.
- Henry Beston on Animals as Other Nations On animals as other nations, not underlings.
- Pierre Corneille on the Manner of Giving On why how you give matters more than the gift.
- Salvador Dalí on False and True Memories On why false memories shine brightest.
- Arthur Conan Doyle on Making the World Better On leaving the world a little better for your presence.
- George Forster on Reason and Feeling On the danger of worshipping cold reason at the expense of feeling.
- Anne Frank on Beauty Amid Misery On choosing the beauty that still remains.
- The 100 Greatest Bird Names of All Time 5,000-word ranked countdown of ornithology's most absurd names
- Lorraine Hansberry on Exceptionalism and Loneliness On the loneliness that comes with being exceptional.
- Thomas Hardy on Galileo and Verse On how poetic form can disarm a dangerous truth.
- Friedrich Hayek on Planning and the Individual On how state planning crowds out the individual's own.
- The Cheese Factory Joke A cheese pun about a French explosion.
- The Dog Whistle Joke A trick-question pun about dog whistles.
- The E.T. Joke A pun about what E.T. is short for.
- The Keyboard Factory Joke A workplace pun about keyboard shifts.
- The Left Side Joke A pun about being all right.
- The Pumpkin Joke A pun about why pumpkins sit on porches.
- The Seagull Joke A classic pun about seagulls and bays.
- The Driving Test Joke A grammar pun about full stops.
- The Soft Drink Joke A pun about a soft drink to the head.
- Rockwell Kent on Wilderness as a Living Mirror On wilderness as a mirror of the imagination.
- Yagyū Munenori on Swordlessness On mastering the art of having no sword.
- Reinhold Niebuhr on Complexity and Reason On why complexity demands reason over sentiment.
- Katherine Anne Porter on Beauty as Moral Duty On the moral duty to protect beauty, even one's own.
- Alfréd Rényi on Mathematics The famous coffee-into-theorems line, finally attributed correctly.
- Salman Rushdie on Religion and Criticism On why ideas, including religions, deserve criticism.
- Marguerite Yourcenar on Madness and Destiny On the touch of madness required to build a destiny.
- Tolstoy's Guide to Daily Wisdom Tolstoy's last project — a year of daily readings from world philosophy
- Camus: "My revolt, my freedom, and my passion" Camus's three consequences of accepting absurdity — not despair but revolt, freedom, and passion. Surfaced in a Maria Popova essay on a 1945 interview.
- Arthur C. Clarke: "Stepping stones to higher things" Arthur C. Clarke on the privilege of being part of an unfinished arc — surfaced by Quote Investigator from a 1964 BBC interview.
- Fuel Efficiency of Launching Enemies into the Sun A physics analysis of disposing of objects via the Sun versus interstellar space
- Hesse: "Not to know whether there is a God…is far better than to know for sure" Hesse's post-WWI letter to a young German on the corrosive role of certainty — surfaced by Maria Popova at The Marginalian.
- Infinite Jeffs Infinite Jest with every word replaced by 'Jeff'
- JFK: "We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts" A.Word.A.Day's Thought for Today — JFK on the prerequisite of democracy: that citizens can be trusted to evaluate ideas the state finds inconvenient.
- Juan Ramón Jiménez: "Platero stops eating and looks at me" The Spanish Nobel laureate's prose poem about a quiet exchange of attention with his donkey — surfaced by Maria Popova on tenderness as a vehicle for the eternal.
- "Hi Hungry, I'm Dad" Joke The canonical dad joke.
- Orange / No It Doesn't Joke A short joke about a rhyming impossibility.
- Rotation of Earth Joke A short pun on Earth's rotation.
- Scarf and Hat Joke A short pun on hanging around.
- Spider Web Developer Joke A short pun about taking the spider out for drinks.
- Supermarket Checkout Divider Joke A short joke about the wedge bar at checkout.
- Whiteboards Are Remarkable Joke A short pun on the word remarkable.
- Philipp von Jolly: "In physics, almost everything is already discovered" Quote Investigator traces the famous 'physics is finished' line — usually attributed to Lord Kelvin — to a paraphrase of Philipp von Jolly's advice to a young Max Planck.
- Judy Garland: "'Twas not my lips you kissed, but my soul" Quote Investigator traces a widely-attributed Sarah Bernhardt / Mary Magdalene line to a 1939 Judy Garland poem, My Love Is Lost.
- Merriam-Webster's Backward Index 315,000 dictionary entries typed in reverse for suffix lookup
- Thoreau: "The poet's relation to his theme is the relation of lovers" Thoreau on how attention becomes love — surfaced by Maria Popova through a journal entry about 24 hours spent with a screech owl.
- William Arthur Ward: "Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think" Quote Investigator traces 'Before you speak, listen. Before you write, think.' to William Arthur Ward's 1968 compilation Thoughts of a Christian Optimist.
- Balzac: "Vocations we wanted to pursue, but didn't, bleed on the whole of our existence" A.Word.A.Day's Thought for Today (May 20) — Honoré de Balzac on the lasting cost of unchosen careers, color-bleeding through the rest of a life.
- bell hooks: "Living as we did — on the edge — we developed a particular way of seeing reality" bell hooks on the epistemic advantage of growing up at the edge — surfaced in a Maria Popova essay on margins.
- Victor Borge: "Laughter is the shortest distance between two people" Quote Investigator traces the famous Borge line to a 1972 appearance — the canonical attribution holds up, surprisingly.
- Cucumbers Were Once Called 'Cowcumbers' An archaic English name for cucumbers, still used in some 18th-century texts
- Edward de Bono: "Creative thinking is a skill that can be practised and nurtured" Wikiquote's Quote of the Day (May 19) from the inventor of 'lateral thinking' — creative thinking framed as a teachable skill, not a mystical gift.
- Annette Between Two Posts Joke A short pun on a girl's name and a net.
- Camo Jacket and Flip Flops Joke A short two-clothing-item joke that turns on a single twist.
- Grave Mistake Tombstone Joke A short single-word-pun joke about typos.
- Organ Donor Guts Joke A short medical pun.
- Pavlov in a Hotel Joke A short Pavlov joke.
- Popsicle Fallen Through Ice Joke A short pun about dads and ice.
- Square Root of -100 Joke A short math pun on complex numbers.
- Tennis Love Nothing Joke A short tennis-and-relationships pun.
- Trump Depends Joke A short brand-name pun.
- Vegan Family Bucket Joke A short pun about KFC and family.
- Kundera: "We can never know what to want" Milan Kundera on the structural irreversibility of life decisions — surfaced in a Maria Popova essay on ambivalence.
- George Schaller: "Her being eludes me" Conservationist George Schaller on the limit of observing a panda — surfaced in a Maria Popova essay on the inner worlds of other creatures.
- Smithfield match A 1703 phrase for marriage of convenience, from a London livestock market
- Daphne du Maurier: "How simple life becomes when things like mirrors are forgotten" A.Word.A.Day's Thought for Today (May 13, 2026) — Daphne du Maurier on the simplicity of a self-image-free life.
- "Do Not Confine Your Children to Your Own Learning" Quote Investigator traces a parenting line often misattributed to Tagore
- Cow Lightning Medium Rare Joke A short pun about lightning, statistics, and steak.
- The Final Front-Ear Joke Captain Kirk's three ears, by way of the show's opening narration.
- Garden Plot Thickens Joke A garden mystery with a literary punchline.
- Mortician and Electrician Joke A short pun on two unrelated professions sharing a workplace surprise.
- Moscow Russian Into Things Joke A pun about hastily deciding to move countries.
- Postmen Anagram Joke An anagram joke about the postal service.
- The Queue Silent-Letters Joke An etymology-flavoured pun about the spelling of 'queue'.
- The Shatner Panties Joke A two-line dad joke about Captain Kirk and the lingerie business.
- Suitcase Emotional Baggage Joke A short pun about cancelling vacation plans.
- Wind Turbines Metal Fan Joke Two wind turbines discuss their musical tastes.
- Julian of Norwich "Mercy and forgiveness leadeth us to grace" Wikiquote's Quote of the Day from Julian of Norwich, the 14th-century English anchoress whose Revelations of Divine Love is the earliest surviving book in English by a woman.
- "Nobody Notices When Things Go Right" Quote Investigator traces Zimmerman's Law of Complaints to 1978
- Rake's progress A 1733 Hogarth series became a phrase for decline by folly
- Takeaway Reduce an 8-letter word to 3 letters, one letter at a time
- Whitman: "I felt down in my soul the clear and unmistakable conviction to disobey all" Whitman's resolve in the face of Emerson's critique of Leaves of Grass — surfaced in a Maria Popova essay on creative confidence.
- Boulay de la Meurthe — "Worse than a crime; it was a blunder" Not Talleyrand, not Fouché, not Napoleon
- Gary Snyder — "The cage they were tricked into entering" From Earth House Hold (1969), via The Marginalian
- The Plain Bagel Joke A short food-pun about aerodynamic baked goods.
- The Brazilian Lightbulb Joke A lightbulb joke about counting in Portuguese.
- The Burger King and Dairy Queen Joke A fast-food monarchy joke about contraception.
- The Chinese Lightbulb Joke A pun about durable Chinese lightbulbs.
- The Harp Discount Joke A musical pun about discount harps and connections.
- The Magician's Pear Joke A magician's misdirection — and a fruit complaint.
- The Microscope and the Telescope Joke A one-line dad joke about an unfortunate optical accident.
- The Broken Pizza Joke A pizza-repair pun about adhesive paste.
- The Playground Slide Joke A classic chicken-crossing-the-road update for the playground generation.
- The Least Spoken Language Joke A linguistic technicality.
- The Loud Television Joke A classified ad with built-in punchline.
- The Viking Without a Boat Joke A one-letter word swap involving a Viking with a navigation problem.
- Marianne Moore — "Imaginary gardens with real toads" From Poetry, via The Marginalian
- Thomas Pynchon — "The wrong questions" Gravity's Rainbow on misdirection as power
- The Sample Text Project AI-generated random word + image combos, printed on actual merch
- Echoes of Genius: Enduring Wisdom from Great Minds A self-published quote book arranged as a perpetual calendar
- Freud on Spending Affection Today's A.Word.A.Day Thought for Today, on Freud's birthday
- The Broken Finger Joke A one-sentence injury report that doubles as a perfect setup-and-payoff structure.
- The Clock Joke A two-line eat-the-clock pun that tells you exactly what kind of joke it is in the punchline.
- The Tall Order Joke An idiom-pun joke whose punchline is also literally true about the Eiffel Tower.
- The Einstein, Newton, and Pascal Joke Three physicists, three counting strategies, one chalk square.
- The Khakis Joke A two-cities setup that runs the same word through two American accents and lands two different meanings.
- The Mortgage Freeman Joke A two-line celebrity-pun joke that lands the moment you read the punchline.
- The Pea, Lemon, and Potato Joke A shaggy-dog joke about three vegetables leaving a bar that earns its punchline through the differential rolling behaviour of legumes, citrus, and tubers.
- The Soap Opera Joke The kind of two-line groaner that earns a delayed grimace once the genre name lands.
- Martha Nussbaum on Human Fragility On openness as a precondition for being good
- Pythagoras on the Philosopher at the Olympics Where the word 'philosopher' actually came from
- Silphium and the Origin of the Heart Symbol The plant that gave us ❤ — and is being un-extincted
- Arundhati Roy on the Deepest Measure of Success Roy reframes success as a list of practiced verbs — to love, to be loved, to never forget your own insignificance — rather than an outcome.
- Simone de Beauvoir on Marriage and the Freedom to Change Beauvoir on why a marriage isn't a single decision but a daily one — and why that's its strength, not its problem.
- The Ballpark Figure Joke Stadium capacity meets the idiom for an estimate.
- The Scenter Joke A short anatomical pun about the nose's position on the face.
- The Tom Hanks Autograph Joke A one-letter-off pun on a famous actor's name.
- "If we knew what we were doing, it would not be called research." Almost universally attributed to Einstein, almost certainly not his — and a more honest description of how research actually proceeds.
- Lifetime Ration of Exclamation Points — "three" A working rule for prose: three exclamation points per career, used wisely.
- xkcd #2394 — Contiguous 41 States A US map with seven states quietly missing — your job is to spot which
- Hermann Hesse on Wonder and the Aim of Education On schools that teach counting and measuring over delight
- The Emineminence Joke An honorific for a hypothetically-knighted Marshall Mathers.
- The Tinder Matches Joke A dad-joke pun about a profile photo and dating apps.
- The Wee Cough Joke A whispered call to the boss with an extremely Scottish punchline.
- Samuel Goldwyn — "Let's have some new cliches." Samuel Goldwyn — Polish-born MGM founder famed for self-contradicting one-liners ('Goldwynisms') — on the perpetual demand for fresh language.
- Geoffrey Hinton — "We have discovered the secret of immortality. The bad news is, it's not for us." Geoffrey Hinton — the 'godfather of deep learning' who left Google in 2023 to speak openly about AI risk — on the asymmetry between digital minds and biological ones.
- Christopher Reeve — "What makes Superman a hero is not that he has power, but that he has the wisdom and the maturity to use the power wisely." Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman through four films and the eventual paraplegic advocate, on what actually constitutes heroism.
- T.H. White / Merlyn — "The best thing for being sad is to learn something." Merlyn's prescription for sorrow from T.H. White's The Once and Future King — surfaced by Maria Popova as a piece of practical philosophy for low days.
- Hannah Arendt — Men in Dark Times On the strange humanity available to outsiders
- Joseph Heller — "The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed" *Catch-22*'s definition of an enemy, served as today's word
- The Beaver and the Tree It's been nice gnawing you
- The Self-Anesthesia Joke Knock yourself out
- The Paranormal Jeans Joke What kind of pants does a ghost hunter wear?
- The Pi Arthritis Joke On a 1-to-10 pain scale: pi
- The Step Ladder Joke I never knew my real ladder
- The Velcro Rip-Off Joke I wouldn't buy anything with velcro
- Machiavelli — "Force or fraud" Wikiquote's quote of the day, sharpened from *The Discourses*
- Mary Oliver — The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac A poem on belonging to your own life, written after cancer
- Stendhal — "God's only excuse is that he doesn't exist" Quote Investigator nails the 175-year provenance
- Wayne Dyer — "Change the way you look at things" Not Max Planck, despite what the internet insists