Word Spotlight #119: Malus

In a Latin class today, we talked about the word for bad, malus. From malus, English gets all kinds of bad words.  No.  Not that kind of bad words. The following English words trace their origins back to malus: Malice – the desire to do evil Malicious – intending to...

Word of the Day #118: Aestivate

I didn’t post all summer.  Maybe I should start calling this the “infrequent word of the day”. Anyway, now that school is back in I’m back. One of my favorite words is estivate, also spelled aestivate. To estivate is to sleep during the summer...

Tip of the Week #295: How to Stop Losing your Keys

I used to lose my keys all the time.  I can be a bit scatterbrained.  Then, I started attaching my keys to lanyards.  Honestly, I still lose my keys.  But, not nearly as often as I used to.  If you are having trouble keeping up with your keys, try attaching a bright...

Tip of the Week #294: How to Find the History of a Word

Etymology is the study of the history of words.  It also happens to be a passion of mine. In fact, a few summers ago, Compass Classroom and I created a rather ridiculous etymology show called Word up. When you look up a word in a dictionary, you get its definition....