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… The ditty may not be suitable for work or for younger audiences, but it points to a tricky matter of trichoid distinction: namely, … in the strictest biotechnical terms, fur has two required components. If you can get close enough to a gorilla or a …

… treasure trove of words, each with a precise meaning. It is also a source of confusion and frustration, since so many of … and refuse to stand still. Consider our word fowl , which comes from the Old English fugol , meaning any old bird. Our … the difference between Old English and modern English, Medieval Latin and Italian. Within those differences lie …

… got a good laugh over what seemed an absurdity, but a medieval scholastic would have taken the point: He had worked the edges of the mendacium but not the falsiloquium , for in strictest terms Bill Clinton was … first things that Eve learned in the Garden of Eden, lying comes very early on in every child’s education, its …

… Beware the basilisk, too, that terrifying creature of the medieval bestiary that, as Edmund Spenser writes in The Faerie … is foolish enough to get bitten by a Gila monster ought to die.” The Gila monster and its cousin, the Mexican beaded …

… about animals and their ways. Those stories had sharp points. Aristotle credits Aesop with defending a corrupt … They no longer bother me. Remove them, and fresh fleas will come.” In other words: Oust the politician, and another will … that last bit never really works: We brave dangers, and we die. We tell our stories, and we pass on. But the stories …