Cafe Language

A misnomer is a word or term that suggests a meaning that is known to be wrong. Misnomers often arise because the thing named received its name long before its true nature was known. A misnomer may also be simply a word that is used incorrectly or misleadingly.

We hear anywhere from 10 to 200 lies a day. And although we've spent much of our history coming up with ways to detect these lies by tracking physiological changes in their tellers, these methods have proved unreliable. Is there a more direct approach? Noah Zandan uses some famous examples of lying to illustrate how we might use communications science to analyze the lies themselves.

Music video by "Weird Al" Yankovic performing Word Crimes.

Should you believe your ears and the things they hear?

I can't help but feel there's actually a tiny Japanese woman trapped inside that myna bird.

Talking 11 month old husky, 'Blaze' from New Hampshire, prefers his freedom and says "No" to his kennel (with annotations)