26 words that have gone nearly ‘extinct’ in the English language

Wordle #1829 Answer for June 22, 2026 Revealed: “OVATE” Stumps Players With Subtle Linguistic Trap

A deceptively simple five-letter puzzle on June 22, 2026, led many Wordle players into a maze of familiar letter patterns before arriving at an uncommon solution: OVATE. For many players, today’s challenge was not about obscure spelling or repeated letters. Instead, the difficulty stemmed from the word’s relative rarity in everyday conversation. While most English speakers recognize common endings such as “-ATE,” far fewer regularly encounter the word “ovate,” a term most often used in botanical, scientific, and descriptive contexts. The June 22 puzzle continues a noticeable trend in recent Wordle selections. Over the past several weeks, players have encountered

Why an ear of corn has nothing to do with hearing 

Some words have two unconnected meanings – others have simply drifted apart

Isn't anybody doing phrasing anymore? [Weeners]

[link] [3 comments]

Country diary: This is as wild and remote as Britain gets – a trip to St Kilda | Nigel Brown

Outer Hebrides: It’s nearly 200 years since anyone lived on this hostile archipelago, though their ‘village’ remains – as does an astonishing wealth of wildlifeDawn on a deep-rolling ocean, and I am about to realise a dream. We’re 35 nautical miles west of the Outer Hebrides, on board the expedition cruise ship M/V Sea Spirit, approaching the archipelago of St Kilda – the most remote outpost of the British Isles, and the UK’s only dual Unesco world heritage site. Impregnable sheer cliffs spike the seascape, rising sheer to 1400 feet, and we’re in the company of Risso’s dolphins, flights of gannets and hurrying auks.We make landing at Hirta, the largest of the four islands at about 2.7 square miles. Above the great storm beach lies a deserted, unnamed “village”, a thin crescent of traditional Hebridean cottages. Nowadays, the only inhabitants are St Kilda wrens (Troglodytes troglodytes hirtensis) – larger and darker than the mainland populations – but each cottage also bears a simple plaque listing the last family to live there. No 3 was home to Mary Ann and William MacDonald and their 11 children, not all of whom survived long, their names adopted by later siblings – John, Finlay, Annabella, Mary, Mary B, Finlay, Jonn, Malcolm, Kirsty, Rachel, Marion and Mae. It seems almost impossible, standing here now, but for centuries their ancestors were adapted to this harsh isolation, before finally in 1930 the last St Kildans were evacuated at their request. Continue reading...

English-language takeover of Tour de France forces even French riders to adapt

English has increasingly replaced French — and also Italian, Flemish and Spanish — as the language of the peloton.

French Expression of the Day: Ne pas avoir la langue dans sa poche

This French expression is a good one to teach your unfiltered friend.

Puzzle Solutions Edition 2140

WORD SPIRAL 1 Wise; 2 Edam; 3 Melt; 4 Tune; 5 Eros; 6 Suds; 7 Snub; 8 Bunk; 9 Kith; []

Why English spelling looks like it lost a bar fight with history

English spelling is not broken so much as visibly injured. A video by Airlearn Language Show explains how the printing press, the Great Vowel Shift, dead gods, French-Italian beef, Dutch typesetters, and Renaissance Latin nerds left English looking like it staggered out of a tavern with Wednesday in one pocket and colonel in the other. — Read the rest The post Why English spelling looks like it lost a bar fight with history appeared first on Boing Boing.

black bean confetti salad 2.0

I was in Paris* last week — no, I cannot believe I get to utter sentences like that so casually, either, pinch me — and it was really, truly, and surprisingly spring. The magnolia trees at the Jardin du Palais Royal supplied us with a lace curtain of fluttering pink shadows, the daffodils and hyacinth were popping up from the ground like they’d missed us, and everyone was outside and stayed out until after midnight and this energy climbed inside me, evicted all of the seasonal malaise (turned out I was just cold!), and I did my best to bring all of this warmth and joy back to NYC with me. And despite the fact that my grouchy (sorry, “weathered”) friends tried to warn me that we were experiencing a “false spring” and “don’t fall for it,” la la la, I said, it is spring in my heart now — and in my kitchen, and busted out a warm weather salad. Which is to say: I’m sorry, this sudden cold spell might be my fault. Read more »

Mona Khalil, Who Devoted Her Life To Protecting Turtles, Killed By Israeli Airstrike

For half a century, a house on the coast in southern Lebanon has kept vigil over Al-Mansouri beach and the blue Mediterranean waters beyond. Mona Khalil's grandfather built the house in the 1970s, around seven miles from the border with Israel. A decade later, the Khalil family fled the Lebanese Civil War and left the house behind. Khalil eventually settled in the Netherlands and found work as a porcelain restorer. In 1999, on a visit to her grandparents' old home, Khalil walked along the shores, a beer in hand, when she heard a soft crunch. She watched, mesmerized, as a sea turtle lugged herself across the sand to lay her eggs, each soft and white and big as a ping-pong ball. This turtle altered the course of Khalil's life. After she learned Lebanon's sea turtles were under threat, she devoted her days to protecting them. The following year, Khalil moved back into the house, which she painted tangerine—a tribute to the safe haven she had found in the Netherlands—and transformed into a conservation hub with a partner, a woman named Habiba Fayed. This became the Orange House Project, a bed and breakfast where guests could help clean litter off the beach, watch for turtle tracks, and monitor nests. In a 2017 interview, Khalil vowed to continue this work as long as God gives me life. Earlier this month, on June 4, an Israeli airstrike hit the Orange House and grievously wounded Khalil and burned another woman. On June 19, the 76-year-old Khalil died of her injuries, one of the 4,175 people killed in Israeli attacks across Lebanon since March 2. (Lebanon's health ministry does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.)

Italian word of the day: 'Seccare'

Don't get annoyed when we tell you about this word.

How to learn a language in your 50s – and slow down brain ageing

Forget crosswords – a new study has found that if you want to keep your grey matter young, learn French

This Week in People’s History, Jul 1–7, 2026 – 250 Years – and of All Weeks Computer Problems

This Week in People’s History, Jul 1–7, 2026 – 250 Years – and of All Weeks Computer Problems jay Mon, 06/29/2026 - 00:08

The English rebel who shaped America long before 1776

Two anniversaries are colliding this year. One will dominate headlines, but the other will go unnoticed. They are separated by 250 years, an ocean, and one extraordinary Englishman. As America is preparing to turn 250, I’ve just returned from London, where another milestone quietly reaches its own anniversary: It’s 500 years since a man named []

‘We have returned to Europe’: but what took so long?

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20 poets and the lines you'll still be thinking about tomorrow

Poetry's history expanded what language could do. These are the poets whose lines did that most clearly — and what made each one matter

Man Rescued After 8 Days Trapped Under Earthquake Rubble

Leonardo Fernandez ViloriaA man was rescued from under mountains of earthquake rubble after surviving for eight days. Hernán Alberto Gil Flores, 44, was pulled from under 29 feet of wreckage, as reported by CNN Thursday morning. The shopping mall security guard was caught in the collapse of the nine-story mall’s parking lot in the coastal city of La Guaria, one of the cities most affected by the natural disaster. Rescue teams identified a living victim using radar sonar and sound detection equipment, and further identified Flores by his fingers waving beneath piles of debris. Throughout the mission, which lasted several days, teams communicated with Flores and provided him with food and water. As the death toll from the devastating earthquakes rises, with 50,000 people currently unaccounted for, miracle rescues such as Flores’ provide slight glimmers of hope for those affected. “Once I found out that he was alive, I saw a ray of sunshine,” Flores’ wife, Usbimar Gonzales, said. “He was holding up like a hero.” The magnitudes of the two earthquakes, which struck 39 seconds apart, were 7.2 and 7.5, respectively. According to an announcement from the Coastan Rican Red Cross via Facebook, the man is “medically stable.”Read it at CNNRead more at The Daily Beast.

Remembering Mona Khalil, Beloved Lebanese Sea Turtle Conservationist Killed in Israeli Airstrike

Acclaimed conservationist Mona Khalil was killed by an Israeli strike on her beachside home in the village of al-Mansouri in southern Lebanon. The 76-year-old spent more than 25 years working to protect endangered sea turtles, and her work helped turn a stretch of southern Lebanon’s coastline into one of the most important nesting sites for endangered sea turtles in the eastern Mediterranean. Khalil lived in “the Orange House” — her grandmother’s home, which she helped transform into a refuge for endangered sea turtles, an ecotourism site and a training ground in ecological conservation for a generation of volunteers. “This is not a project that belongs to me,” she once said. “It belongs to Lebanon. It belongs to the whole world.” A refugee of the Lebanese civil war, Khalil returned to Lebanon from the Netherlands in 1999 and began her conservation work after seeing a turtle laying eggs on the beach near her family’s seaside home. Since then, Mona rarely left her home and the beach she had spent years protecting. “Mona was like a symbol of hope, of life and of resistance in south Lebanon, and probably that’s one of the reasons she was killed,” says Rami Khashab, a Lebanese herpetologist who worked alongside Khalil. “They are trying to kill the hope of the Lebanese people.”

Today's Wordle Hints, Answer and Help for June 27, #1834

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle for June 27, No. 1,834.

Country diary: There’s no blackbird song like the one on my street | Josie George

Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire: With summer’s great silence coming, we must enjoy the birdsong while we can – as I have done with my local conifer croonerI have two summer earworms right now. The first is O Sole Mio, the jingle of our local ice-cream van, the second is a particular phrase that our resident blackbird keeps singing. Four notes, moving down the scale but ending slightly on the minor: that’s his party piece, delivered after a jazzy performance that includes dozens of other motifs. He likes to bellow it from the tallest tip of the conifer tree that sways over the road, and I can’t stop whistling it.He will have developed this refrain over years, and like all musicians, he will have started off shakily. If I didn’t notice it last season, it was probably because he was still a shy apprentice, his song unfinished as he practised quietly to work out his preferred combination of notes. Continue reading...

Today’s Wordle answer and hints for #1847 on July 10

There's no need to lose your streak - here's the 'Wordle' answer for today The post Today’s Wordle answer and hints for 1847 on July 10 appeared first on NME.

Wordle today: Answer, hints for July 10, 2026

Here's the answer for Wordle 1847 on July 10 as well as a few hints, tips, and clues to help you solve it yourself.

Iran’s Beiranvand denies 10-man Belgium in World Cup draw as Nathan Ngoy sees red

There was simply no debate over the moment of the match and it is one that Iran will cherish, even more so if they are to progress to the World Cup knockout stages for the first time. Every angle of Alireza Beiranvand’s preposterous save to prevent Belgium taking the lead approaching the hour added to the miraculousness of it all. Perhaps the most ludicrous element was that Beiranvand appeared to have been eliminated from the game when the ball dropped at the feet of Maxim De Cuyper inside the six-yard box, the goal gaping. Yet, while scrambling on the turf after seesawing to his left in an attempt to intercept Kevin De Bruyne’s rolled cross, Beiranvand stuck out a strong left hand to shut the door in the face of De Cuyper, before smothering the ball.Presumably, given this summer’s apparent appetite for a goalkeeping cult hero, this all means Beiranvand’s following might now increase tenfold, though as Iran’s longtime No 1 who saved Cristiano Ronaldo’s penalty at the 2018 World Cup, he is no unknown. Just ask Vozinha and Eloy Room how their outstanding performances for Cape Verde and Curaçao respectively have done wonders for their profile. At 33, Beiranvand is a youngster compared to those guys. Continue reading...