239: Rebel versus Rebel Aug 4, 2015

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Often, verbs and nouns are accented differently. As such, 'rebel' in the case of the verb is accented on the ultima, whereas for a noun, the accentuation falls on the penult.

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1511: "I'll be home in 3 days; don't wash" Might be False Jan 31, 2019

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1171: Terms of Venery Feb 22, 2018

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Names for groups of animals such as 'murder of crows', 'pod of whales', or 'tower of giraffes' are called 'terms of venery'; as the name suggests, they were originally when hunting (compare with ' venison '). Many of the names may sound silly to people now, and not unreasonably; there is no reason to memorize all of them, so in practical use people will opt for 'herd' or 'group' rather than saying other specific words, with a few exceptions for more common animals. It may seem that this is because we have less of a need to discuss animals nowadays, as few people need to hunt and farm than in the past, but before the 11th century, and in some ways even before the 14th century, nobody used terms of venery much anyway either. Considering that there would not have developed a hunting culture around, for instance, wombats (for whom a group is a 'wisdom') in England and France where these terms began, it should be reasonable t...
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1958: Ñ in the USA Apr 25, 2020

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English is by no means the only language lacking diacritic marks on its letters regularly, but for known for having plenty of loan words, or words that have different meaning depending upon the stress, it is strange. However, there are some exceptions, and especially with proper nouns . For instance, there are only 5 places in the USA which have an Ñ in their names, those being Cañon City, Colorado, La Cañada Flintridge, California; Española, New Mexico; Peñasco, New Mexico; and Cañones, New Mexico. Support Word Facts at patreon.com/wordfacts
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