World Wide Words
Michael Quinion of Bristol, England publishes a lively discussion of words, delivered to your emailbox just in time for weekend reading. It’s a great site for intrepid young readers and language questers. From words invented yesterday to ones that passed out of use centuries ago, World Wide Words looks at origins, uses and misuses, and often at the history that frames and explains a word.
In his current column, you’ll find malapert, “keen as mustard,” splog, chock-a-block, fulsome, and synanthropic. That last one is a word I’ve needed for decades – I’ve had the concept but no name for it.
A caution: There are lots of words in the world, and you may prefer not to hear some of them around the house. Depending on your child’s age and your standards, you might want to glance over content, and even cut and paste.
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Beth’s comment on maps led me, after several decades, to again dive into the wonderment of The Sword and the Stone. (The book stands to the Disney cartoon about as The Odyssey to Greece on Five Dollars a Day.)
From it, insight about children as “language questers":