Page 9 - Jim Witherell News Today

Even the bathrooms of this Washington D.C. museum offer insights and humor about words.

Get ready for blurbs, gutters, leaves, backbones and front matter, if that's not too foreward.

A group of ravens is known as an 'unkindness,' while when it comes to geese, on the ground a group of them is called a 'gaggle,' but in flight they're known as a 'skein' or 'wedge.'

They can be found everywhere including in synanagrams, antigrams, compound words, portmanteaus and even kangaroo words. A closer look at words bearing words.

Flopcorn, Jiffylust, brimplet and glacket are among the words suggested for inclusion in the dictionary to fill some gaps in our language.

The 89-year-old game is still going strong, creating friendly rivalries, increasing vocabulary and, next weekend, raising money for local literacy efforts.

Television programs have been a factory of word creation over the years, with many words becoming part of the lexicon yada yada yada . . .

'False flag,' 'tranches,' 'SWIFT,' 'Molotov' and the mysterious 'Z' are among the words we're hearing as the invasion of Ukraine continues.

Four hundred years later, Shakespeare continues to provide ample examples of our language's many peculiarities.

Lewiston columnist's excitement about receiving an updated version of every newspaper's 'bible' is matched by his desire to edit it.