What makes a word a 'word'?

Summary

Ridiculous History — "What Makes a Word a 'Word'?"

Podcast: Ridiculous History (iHeartPodcasts)
Hosts: Ben Bowlin & Noel Brown
Date: January 15, 2026

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Overview:

In this lively, meta episode, Ben and Noel get gloriously lost in the question: What makes a word “a word”? They joyfully trace the history, mechanics, and quirks of language invention and official adoption, from human tribes naming the sky to the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) rigorous vetting criteria. Along the way, they wax philosophical about language as a technology, the chaos of slang, and the surprising difficulty of coining truly new words.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Language as a Technology & Human Tool

• Language as “ancient technology”: The hosts reflect on language’s persistent evolution, noting “language is one of humanity's oldest technologies... and it is still very much a work in progress.” (Ben, 01:29)
• The idea of language as a medium for transmitting ideas blows Noel’s mind anew each time, challenging listeners to see communication as innovation, not a banal default.

The Mythical "True Language" and Lingua Franca

• Ben recounts historical attempts to identify a universal language, referencing experiments where children were isolated in the hope they'd speak "the true language of God." (02:15)
• Esperanto comes up as a running joke between the hosts. (“I love the idea of Esperanto being the true language of God.” - Noel, 02:51)

All Words Are Made Up (& The Power of Shared Vibes)

• “All words at some point were made up...” (Ben, 07:10) — The show demystifies language by highlighting its arbitrary, communal origins.
• The meaning-making process: Words often begin as “vibes-based” (Noel, 07:35), or chosen for sound association (onomatopoeia).
• Many terms, especially slang, cross borders and get remixed — language is a “game of telephone that involves the entire world.” (Noel, 06:23)

How Does a Word Become “Real”?

• The episode’s guiding question: “How does a word officially become a ‘real word’, like the kind you see in a dictionary?” (Ben, 08:02)
• The line between sense and nonsense: The hosts playfully attempt to create new words on the spot—revealing through much laughter how tough this really is.
  • "Can we also acknowledge that's a pretty difficult thing to do?" (Noel, 17:03)

Memorable Word Inventions:

• “Flargle” (Max, 17:28), only to discover it's already on the internet!
• “Quinauntive” (Ben, 18:25) — their first successful nonsense word.

Dictionaries: The Gatekeepers

- The Editorial Process

• Merriam-Webster’s Definition of a Word:
  • “A speech sound or series of speech sounds that symbolize and communicate a meaning, usually without being divisible into smaller units capable of independent use.” (Noel, quoting MW, 11:41)
  • The hosts joke about the noodle-baking complexity of such definitions (12:05).
• Dictionaries like Oxford and Merriam-Webster have “house rules” but converge on similar standards: printed citations, sustained usage, and prevalence.
  • Oxford’s famed “Triple Five” Rule: a word must appear in print five times, in five sources, over five years to be considered (Ben, 35:03).
  • Today, with social media, that five-year standard can be met in “one weird day on Twitter or TikTok.” (Ben, 35:41)
• Lexicographer Sleuthing: Teams at the OED and other dictionaries scan everything from novels to TV transcripts, looking for new words and verifying their use and staying power (Ben, 32:07).

- The Evolutionary Nature of the Dictionary

• Dictionaries aren't prescriptive; they're “trying to figure out that old technology of communication” (Ben, 48:13).
• Words are not only added, but removed—Ben and Noel discuss retired words like "Hodad" (beachgoer who never surfs) and "stylopodium" (a botanical term for a part of a parsley flower).
  • "No wonder it got nixed. Yeah, no one was referring to that part. It's just too specific." (Noel, 46:18)
• Linguistic drift means dictionaries must always evolve: “English is a living language, right? Communication is key, not fancy spelling.” (Ben, 48:13)

Slang, Borrowings, and Culture

• Noel brings up Toronto's vibrant, multicultural teen slang—terms like “cheesed,” “mandam,” “nyzit,” and “walahi”—to illustrate how languages absorb and adapt newcomers (09:12).
• The difficulty of translation and the “marriage between accuracy and poetry”: “A good translator... has to find something at least adjacent in the other language.” (Ben, 15:51)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “On a long enough timeline, everything's gobbledygook.” – Noel (06:23)
• “All words at some point were made up.” – Ben (07:10)
• “Is it vibes based, Ben?” – Noel (07:35)
• “If you want your word canonical, buckaroos, we gotta get it in print.” – Ben (30:12)
• [On coinage:] “Can we at least acknowledge that it’s not easy?” – Noel (18:47)

Host Banter Highlights

• A running joke about "Flargle": Is it new or not? Turns out it exists in Urban Dictionary, pop culture, and as merch.
  • “‘Flargle’s whatever you need it to be.’” – Max (26:01)
• Delightful detour into cravats vs. ascots, resolved by Max’s research: “A cravat is... an umbrella term that includes things like bow ties, ascots, and actual ties.” (Max, 32:46)
• Bringing back delightful “banished” words like Hodad, and fun with the word “unguent” (Noel, 53:03).

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The "Words of the Year": What They Reveal

The hosts run through "word of the year" picks over the last several years across major dictionaries (Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, Collins, Oxford, Cambridge), with much laughter at the sometimes odd choices:

• 2020: “Pandemic,” “lockdown,” “quarantine.”
• 2021: “Allyship,” “vaccine,” “NFT,” “vax,” “perseverance.”
• 2022: “Woman,” “gaslighting,” “goblin mode,” “permacrisis.”
• 2023: “Hallucinate,” “authentic,” “AI,” “riz” (charisma), “hallucinate” again.
• 2024: “Demure,” “polarization,” “brat,” “brainrot,” “manifest.”
• 2025: “Six-seven” (just the numbers), “slop,” “vibe coding,” “parasocial,” “perseverance” (again from Cambridge).

Insight:
Words of the Year are both reflections of collective consciousness and PR tools for dictionaries. “It's a little bit of a PR move... like, we're the ones that are defining the zeitgeist this time.” (Noel, 37:44) Just as importantly, trending language provides a kind of “tree ring” history of society. (“It's kind of like dendochronology... the study of tree rings.” – Ben, 39:01)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:39–03:08: Warm-up banter, wordplay, and the idea of language as technology.
• 06:01–08:53: Why words are invented and how they move from “gobbledygook” to real language.
• 11:41–13:26: What is a word? The nitty-gritty of definitions and phonemes.
• 17:03–18:42: Playing the “invent a word” game – and running into Flargle.
• 29:35–34:25: Dictionary criteria for new words, the “Triple Five” rule.
• 37:44–39:01: “Words of the Year” — origins, purpose, and cultural reflection.
• 45:26–48:20: Lost and removed words, English as a living language.
• 48:35–55:55: More “words of the year,” most/least loved English words, and why some words grate.

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Tone and Style

Ben and Noel keep things playful, delighting in digressions, oddball words, and linguistic trivia. Their tone is warm, openly nerdy, and self-deprecating (“It also makes Noel, Max, and yours truly Supes fun at parties.” – Ben, 13:56).

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Summary Takeaways

• Inventing a word is surprisingly hard—and even harder to get it officially recognized.
• Language is constantly in flux, shaped by community, culture, technology, and time.
• Dictionaries are not fixed authorities, but chroniclers of an evolving conversation.
• Every new word, from “flargle” to “parasocial,” offers a snapshot of the society that uses it.
• The boundaries between nonsense, slang, and canonical words are both arbitrary and delightful.
• There’s tremendous power in who controls which words live on—and what gets left out.

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Choice Sign-Off

• "Thank you for sailing the high linguistic seas with us." – Ben (56:17)
• “Good luck getting into the dictionary!” — Ben (54:00)
• “Can you guess the most common word in the English language? ... It’s ‘the.’” (54:06–54:14)

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Recommended for: Language nerds, history buffs, etymology enthusiasts, writers, and anyone who’s ever wondered where words come from—or tried to make one up.

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For further listening, check out Stuff You Should Know’s Esperanto episode, or the podcast Pluribus for a deep dive into hive-mind sci-fi.

Transcript

[Ben Bollen]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartradio. Welcome back to the show, fellow Ridiculous historians. Thank you as always so much for tuning in. Let's give a big shout out to our super producer, Mr. Max Williams.

[Noel Brown]

Gobbledygook, hippity hoopla. What is it? Bibbidi, Bobbidi, Bang bang boogie setup? Never mind. Carry on.

[Ben Bollen]

Nailed it. No, we can get it into the OED. That's Mr. Noel Brown. None other. They called me Ben Bollen in this neck of the woods. And guys, thinking about this, we love words. We actually would not have this show without words.

[Noel Brown]

It's kind of key. I suppose we could just do it with Wild Gesticulations now here in the video age. But don't think it would hit the same and it'd be really hard to consume whilst doing your housework.

[Ben Bollen]

That's right. Cause you have to watch us. We are still working on the interpretive dance and episodes of Ridiculous History.

[Noel Brown]

It's always happening in our hearts.

[Ben Bollen]

There it is. So, you know, thank you. Words. It's weird, Noel, because language is one of humanity's oldest technologies ever and it is still very much a work in progress.

[Noel Brown]

And we love that, you know, on this show and on stuff that I want you to know, this idea of things you might not think are technology as being a form of technology, you know, it is an innovation. The idea of being able to manipulate sounds and phonemes and have shared understanding and logic surrounding ways that we can relate to other people. To have a means to do that and a medium with which to transmit those ideas is absolutely technology. And I don't know, maybe I'm stating the obvious, but every time that comes up, I'm always like a little like, blown away.

[Ben Bollen]

It's wild, right? And I'm right there with you, man. There is no universal spoken language. In previous episodes, we talked about how there were a couple of folks over millennia who had tried to prove to themselves that a universal language existed. That if you raised a couple of human kids and you never let them talk to anyone else, they would speak the true language of God.

[Noel Brown]

Which is what? Esperanto.

[Ben Bollen]

I love an Esperanto reference, man.

[Noel Brown]

So I love the idea of Esperanto being the true language of God.

[Ben Bollen]

That would be so wild. Check out our. Our pals, Josh and Chuck and Jerry. They made an excellent Esperanto episode on their show. Stuff you should know.

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[Ben Bollen]

It's weird because to your point, Noel, it is baffling to consider language technology. Over time, thousands of years, over millennia, all sorts of people tried to figure out what makes language tick, how communication works, and again, the general hibbity hoopla of interacting with other humans. None of us are perfect at it.

[Noel Brown]

And to your point, Ben, in this delightful bit of research here, on a long enough timeline, everything's gobbledygook. Oh yeah, it's just a matter of what kind of hits and what becomes useful and enough people use and then that becomes part of the, you know, lexicon or whatever. And you always say on Stuff They Don't Want yout to Know. And on this show I'm certain that, you know, the English language or language in general is a work in progress. And it is a living, you know, language that we're always having new words being injected. And I love this idea of other countries too, using words from countries that are not their own and then recontextualizing them and giving them their own unique spin. But ultimately it's a game of telephone that involves the entire world.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah, and here's a spoiler for, For a lot of us listening right now, this is a play along at home episode. All words at some point were made up, meaning that at some point in ancient history, enough people pointed at the sky and said sky. And everybody just went along with that because they, you know, got what you were pointing at.

[Noel Brown]

Is it vibes based, Ben? Is it like a lot of words? You know, we have the term onomatopoeia referring to a word that is sounds like the thing that it's describing. You know, sometimes can be very effective. I guess those make sense to me that someone looked at a thing and saw the sound that it made and then created the word. But then sky, like what? Where does that even come from? But who are we to say? I mean, we weren't there.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah, and I, I love that point there, Noel, because again, civilization is still working on, as you said, the vibes. For a few years now, you, Max and I have been wondering about a. A bit of related ridiculous history. How does a word officially become a quote unquote real word, like the kind of thing you see in a dictionary or encyclopedia? What is to my old friend from just saying grando boys as a synonym for Thousands of US Dollars. Do we just insist upon it until everybody plays along?

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. I think that's the only way to do it.

[Ben Bollen]

This is our first meta episode of 2026. What makes a word a word?

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, it is. And before we jump into this, I've been on a bit of a tear, a bit of an obsessive Internet rabbit hole lately. Are you familiar bizarre patois and slang used by Toronto teens?

[Ben Bollen]

Ah, you're on the way to Canada. That's true.

[Noel Brown]

Well, I am, but this is unrelated. The Internet started serving me up these videos of these kids in Toronto. Specifically. They sound like they're Jamaican, and they use all these crazy words like cheesed and mandam, which is a group of friends. Or nyzit, which recognize walahi, which is Arabic, if I swear to God. Ting, which is very much a, you know, Jamaican kind of slang. They're always saying, like, tutus. My word, fam. And all of these crazy. It's bizarre, dude. Just look it up in your spare time. Anyone out there that isn't aware, just type in Toronto slang and you'll see some stuff that will blow your wig back.

[Ben Bollen]

I can't wait to dive into this. I know several of those words, but it'd be weird if I use them.

[Noel Brown]

No, but these kids also, they all, like, pitch their voices up and sound like the Lucky Charms Leprechaun. It's a whole thing, dude. It's wild. Wild.

[Ben Bollen]

Oh, man. That's all. Okay, okay. I'm not going to say it's awesome.

[Noel Brown]

Tutu is my word, Krolski. Like, it's insane.

[Ben Bollen]

You give me perfect recommendations every time, man. I'm excited to dive in. We do have to acknowledge, folks, this is an English centric episode. English language centric episode. And we are talking about getting words into the official English lexicon. If you look at other languages and your mileage may vary. For example, France, downright militant about what qualifies as canonical French.

[Noel Brown]

Right? And, like, they both, like, want you to try to speak their language, but also will mock you relentlessly when you do it poorly.

[Ben Bollen]

Oh. Oh, man. Or when you do it. Okay, but you got a weird. You got a weird us cadence to you. Oh, also, no, we have to shout this out. We're pulling a lot of research for this episode from a Brain Stuff video I wrote years and years ago, which features none other than the Quister, our.

[Noel Brown]

Nemesis, giant strip, AKA the Quister. And do check out those Brainstuff videos. They still are alive and well on the Internet. And Brainstuff, the Podcast, hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum, is still very much an ongoing concern, harkening back to our roots in the How Stuff Works universe.

[Podcast Announcer]

Universe.

[Ben Bollen]

As she would say, that's actual facts.

[Noel Brown]

Actual facts, yeah.

[Ben Bollen]

So, no. How would we define a word?

[Noel Brown]

Let's see. Well, Merriam Webster defines. This is like our like, like seventh grade project, you know, presentation Miriam, as a speech sound or series of speech sounds that symbolize and communicate a meaning, usually without being divisible into smaller units capable of independent use. That's a. That's a noodle baker right there.

[Ben Bollen]

I don't think that's a middle school way to begin. I do think.

[Noel Brown]

Well, no, Merriam Webster defines. It's the old joke. This is an incredible quote.

[Ben Bollen]

I do think it is, as you said, a noodle baker. And I like that turn or phrase. We said we were going. Meta, folks. So for what. What are they saying here? They're saying, take the word W O, R, D. You cannot break that down into a sensible series of other words or meaning. Like if you broke it up and it was just O and then RD by themselves, maybe they're abbreviations for something or they're nonsense entirely.

[Noel Brown]

And those would be the aforementioned phonemes. Right? The little nuggets that comprise a word, the sounds that make it up.

[Ben Bollen]

Just so we can make series of sounds that function by the rules of a specific language. And people who understand that language can. Might almost intuitively understand what you're saying. It's kind of like if you speak English and you watch a Scandinavian film or something from the Low Countries, or you're just hanging out in Brussels or something to that effect, you'll hear people speaking and you can almost get what they're saying.

[Noel Brown]

Absolutely. Even Danish versus German, things like that. There's a lot of shared. You know, I'm sorry, I'm hearkening back again to my trip to Denmark recently, but I know German relatively well. Ish enough to get by. And there's enough shared words or words that are very similar and mean similar things, but are spelled slightly different, maybe have a few more J's in them or whatever. It's really easy to read street signs and the typical things walking around, just kind of using context clues and history.

[Ben Bollen]

Has proven time and time again that there's a reason for that, that sort of connectivity. Centuries pass and later, language speakers will find a word. They'll put their own spin on it, they'll remix it, not just for pronunciation, but also for the spelling, for the meaning. Whatever best suits their environment and their ability to communicate. This is one of our favorite sciences and etymology, all about this stuff. It also makes Noel, Max, and yours truly Supes fun at parties.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. And it makes us, you know, it just gives us the warm fuzzies, something that we enjoy. And this is of course, not to be confused with entomology, which is the study of insects.

[Ben Bollen]

I like the pause there.

[Noel Brown]

I know, I'm sorry. On paper, it's like just one letter away.

[Ben Bollen]

Right, right, right. And we have all found ourselves one letter away at some point.

[Noel Brown]

Well, one letter away from one word meaning in one language, something completely different, potentially mega offensive in another.

[Ben Bollen]

And again, I apologize to the good people of the Korean peninsula.

[Noel Brown]

You know what you did, and they know, and you're on a list.

[Ben Bollen]

Everyone knows. Hopefully it's a good list. It's a nice and naughty, naughty situation.

[Noel Brown]

And of course, all of this applies to phrases as well. There are, you know, certain phrases, figures of speech. We went through a thing recently where we were trying to translate some of our podcasts into other languages. And you realize that the job of a good translator is not only these one to one translations. It's how to recommunicate the intent and the meaning of one of these figures of speech that without the cultural context, it's gonna be meaningless. So you have to find like a one to one or something at least adjacent in the other language and culture to make it make any kind of sense.

[Ben Bollen]

Absolutely. Man. This is one of my favorite translators once said, it's a marriage between accuracy and poetry.

[Noel Brown]

Amelia, I knew you were going. That makes exactly. There's an interpretation to it, and it requires a certain nuance and ability to kind of read between the lines and really paint a picture.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah. And allow us to be honest, folks, we are not really here to analyze the in the weeds sociopolitical mechanisms of communication or the mechanics, I should say English. But we do know the question on everyone's mind. How do I, you're saying, make up a word and then make it official.

[Noel Brown]

It's a very good question, Ben, one that I'm really hoping that you're going to help us answer in this episode. Otherwise it's going to be a real letdown.

[Ben Bollen]

All right. Okay. I'll hop on the tightrope with you, man. We're here together. Let's play along at home. All right, everybody in your head, make up a word. Noel, Max, Ben, you at home, make up a word.

[Noel Brown]

Can we also acknowledge that that's pretty difficult thing to do?

[Ben Bollen]

You think so?

[Noel Brown]

I kind of do. Because if you I mean, my mind immediately jumps to just like nonsense words. And even I have a collection and lexicon of nonsense words already in my head. So I'm having a real hard time without just grunting and making guttural noises to actually come up with a discrete new word.

[Ben Bollen]

Max, what do you got?

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Flargle.

[Noel Brown]

But see, Flargle's been done. We know Flargle exists. Flargle exists in the Futurama universe. Somewhat.

[Ben Bollen]

Some.

[Noel Brown]

You know.

[Max Williams]

Prove it. Prove it, Noel.

[Noel Brown]

I will, with the quick cursory Google.

[Ben Bollen]

No, we're keeping all of this in.

[Noel Brown]

Florigal, as we should from the counterfeit cat universe is an anthropomorphic kind of little booger looking purple alien creature that.

[Max Williams]

Sounds like a proper noun, not an actual word.

[Noel Brown]

Bro, you can get a mug. Oh, Flargle's in the urban dictionary, dude.

[Max Williams]

Okay, now I'm on Noel's side. Maybe it is harder to do it.

[Noel Brown]

It's tough, that's all I'm saying. For it to actually be, you know, Flargle Snorpeldork, space attorney.

[Ben Bollen]

Right. Okay.

[Noel Brown]

Everybody remembers Flarpel. Snorkel, Dork, Flargold.

[Ben Bollen]

Excuse me? Blaverdashery.

[Noel Brown]

See, but you just took haberdashery and changed hab to blav.

[Ben Bollen]

Okay, fair point.

[Noel Brown]

I'm not saying it's impossible.

[Ben Bollen]

Quinauntive.

[Noel Brown]

I just say it again.

[Ben Bollen]

Quinauntive.

[Noel Brown]

And I like what you did there because you combine a lot of consonants and vowel y things to make it sounds like English. It does sound like English, but I would argue that that one is probably not going to come up on a cursory Google. You win this round.

[Ben Bollen]

Ben Bolden. No, Crafty devil. We're playing together.

[Noel Brown]

Can we at least acknowledge that it's not easy?

[Ben Bollen]

It is very much not easy. I'm with you there. And like we were saying, don't be surprised if you run into a Flargo moment if the word you made up already exists in some form. And by the way, Max, nice one on differentiating between a proper noun and utility word. Right.

[Noel Brown]

Can I also just say in my floral Google, which is fun to say in and of itself. I found like X post says, tried making a new word. I call it floral.

[Ben Bollen]

You lose, Max.

[Max Williams]

I was just like, trying to. Trying to like, you know, bring out my inner Rick and Morty 100. Yes, exactly.

[Ben Bollen]

And they've got the shlomis.

[Noel Brown]

Yes, of course.

[Ben Bollen]

So, as you can tell, folks, we're running into the same difficulties trying to make up a new word that means Something and is not also inherently hilarious to us. Communication is arguably one of the first big three games. The other two are survival and reproduction. But no riddle is this. How does a made up word like the Beautiful Ones all three of us just described, how does it become quote, unquote real or accepted?

[Noel Brown]

Well, I guess it depends on the context of the question. Like are we talking about how in the history of the human race a word becomes real in terms of its usage or are we talking about officially on paper, recognized by some governing body of language, like in the Phantom Tollbooth, does a word become quote unquote accepted? Because I think whichever one we're talking about, the answer is it depends, right?

[Ben Bollen]

Oh man, you're good at this. I missed when we had. I missed you guys when we weren't recording.

[Noel Brown]

Oh yeah. Honestly dude, it's been really great to have the break because not to say that I was getting burnt out or anything like that, but it's just we do a lot of this and having that break and that reset. I've just been really fired up to do this with y' all and excited to be here. So feeling is mutual.

[Ben Bollen]

It's just such a great question you posed because in the days of old, in the empires of old, this was so ad hoc. Like what you just heard us do, folks, is what really happened throughout history. Most people could not read a written language and words were drifting in and out of meaning, pronunciation and spelling to a crazy degree. A lot of. A lot of good rulers of various empires were aware of this. So they tried to pull a hammurabi and codify stuff. But some of them actively suppressed the power of literacy and they tried to restrict.

[Noel Brown]

Why would they do that? I don't know. I can't think of a logical reason why you'd want to keep people dumb.

[Ben Bollen]

I don't have a single flargle for it.

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[Jenna Kim Jones]

It's like magic you guys. So put down your doom scroller and pick up your faith in humanity and join me, Jenna for the Ripple Effect. It's a reminder that you can start a ripple that changes everything. You really can.

[Podcast Announcer]

We give just that nugget of hope helping other people. For some of our gray shirts, it's during a time when they need help and by helping others, it helps them.

[Jenna Kim Jones]

Listen to the ripple effect with Jenna Kim Jones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Podcast Announcer]

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[Sponsor Announcer]

Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI it all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures.

[Ben Bollen]

Wait, what is a Flargle again?

[Noel Brown]

Flargle Bargle.

[Sponsor Announcer]

It's a.

[Noel Brown]

It's a. It's a cartoon character, but it's also just like. It is a clear example of, like, clearly the Internet attempting to come up with a new word. There is something called Blargle Flargle that is some kind of board game. Zombie Edition.

[Max Williams]

It says here, Ben, the long story short is Flargle's whatever you need it to be.

[Noel Brown]

Six, seven.

[Ben Bollen]

Oh, man, you guys are so chill. I love this.

[Noel Brown]

That's a song. Blargle Flargle Zombie Edition. This is the. The intro to the song is just Blargle, flargle over and over again and then at the end goes grab. When the day is long and the mind is numb Blargle, flargles the words that come no rhyme or reason Just a silly sound Blargle flargle When no thoughts are found.

[Ben Bollen]

That's crazy that they say no rhyme or reason in a poem that rhymes.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah.

[Ben Bollen]

In a pair of words that are.

[Noel Brown]

Clearly designed around the fact that they rhyme.

[Ben Bollen]

So the idea of repressing knowledge is definitely Sith Lord stuff. I think we could argue or. Let's throw Max. Max. What's the Star Trek equivalent of a Sith Lord?

[Max Williams]

I don't know. The Borg, maybe.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah.

[Max Williams]

I mean, but even the board, they.

[Noel Brown]

Have an imperative, though. It's not like they're mean, they just are this thing, Right?

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah.

[Max Williams]

And you could argue the Borg are just kind of what their programming is.

[Noel Brown]

That's what I mean.

[Max Williams]

They're just doing. I mean, you look at the character like Hugh from TNG who is just like, you know, we. I will make your life better if you're gonna simulate it. Or maybe that's from a different episode.

[Ben Bollen]

But still, the board will argue that that's Star Trek. TNG means the Next Generation. True.

[Noel Brown]

Speaking of all this kind of stuff, shout out to Pluribus. By the way, do check that show out. It incorporates a lot of what we're talking about in terms of hive mind kind of stuff. It's a Very, very, very cool depiction of that kind of sci fi trope. But let's get back on track though. We're talking about suppression of language and the fact that in general, in the days of old, most people couldn't read. So the arbiter of which words became words fell to those in the top top, toppy, top top.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, man, you nailed it. This also shows us this longstanding habit of suppressing knowledge, shows us the power of the written word and the power of the book. You know, we've mentioned it before, Noel. Reading something written by your favorite dead author is a lot like necromancy or time travel. And I would say the same with hearing ancient songs.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, it's transportive. And one thing you start to see in fascist regimes is the suppression of stories because of how powerful they are to communicate ideas and to change hearts and minds or to put someone in someone else's shoes. It is an absolute superpower.

[Ben Bollen]

And thankfully, humanity soldiered on through no small numbers of disasters. Some were natural disasters, some were created by people in polity. But now there's not just one system of word adoption, there are several systems. So we have created a word, right? We're still playing along at home. We want legitimacy. How do we get our word in the dictionary is so crazy, man.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, I mean, it always makes our list at the end of every year. The Websters or Cambridge or Oxford, rather their word of the year, which I believe this year, in previous years, stuff like Brainrot, which you could argue that combining two existing words together into one word makes a new word. And it is something that was just very much in the zeitgeist. So a lot of this slang and a lot of these words that have ended up in that Toronto slang thing I was talking about earlier are the kinds of things to really start seeing thrown around as quote, unquote, new words.

[Ben Bollen]

100%.

[Noel Brown]

There's way more to it than just pop culture y stuff. The lovely folks at Webster Miriam, they've combed through existing literature, right? Like sleuthing for new words, changes in language, new uses.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah, yeah. Different dictionaries are going to have their various sort of house rules, methods for selecting words to be included in their newer editions. But they're more or less looking for the same criteria. It's kind of like how 0.6214-ish of a mile is technically 1km. But both of those measurements describe the exact same amount of distance. If you want your word canonical buckaroos, we gotta get it in print. If you want to get a nod from the Oxford English Dictionary. You got.

[Noel Brown]

There's a fancy boys on the block.

[Ben Bollen]

Oh, my gosh. They're so fancy. They don't even wear ties, man. They wear cravats.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. No, the fanciest.

[Ben Bollen]

Do you wear a cravat? Have you ever won?

[Noel Brown]

I don't know the difference between a tie and a cravat, but I'm not gonna lie.

[Ben Bollen]

It's like I. I feel like it's a fancy. It's like a scarf that goes inside your college.

[Noel Brown]

What's an ascot?

[Ben Bollen]

Oh, my gosh.

[Noel Brown]

What does Fred wearing. Scooby Doo. Is that a cravat or an ascot?

[Max Williams]

That's an ascot.

[Ben Bollen]

That's an ascot.

[Noel Brown]

But he's got a little scarf action going on. So there. I can't be the only one wondering.

[Max Williams]

I'm on it.

[Ben Bollen]

All right. Max is going to update us.

[Noel Brown]

He's pulling up the facts. He is.

[Ben Bollen]

We're so excited. I love the instrumental version of Max with the facts as well. Man. It's just so hype.

[Noel Brown]

So shout out to Matt Frederick for composing that absolutely mellifluous bop.

[Ben Bollen]

Oh, yes, and mellifluous. What a wonderful word, man. So it's around 1857, and the Eggheads over at Oxford have used a reading program ever since then to do what you just described, Noel. To find what they consider use cases, appropriate quotations for each entry in their dictionary.

[Noel Brown]

Already got me. Think AI is going to start being used for this moving forward, and then it's going to influence the outcome. And yeah, it's like a uro burros kind of situation.

[Ben Bollen]

I am Jack's lack of surprise, bro.

[Noel Brown]

Just. Just thinking there's. There's kind of no way around it because what you're even describing is reading programs. Yeah, that's, you know, a precursor to all of this stuff.

[Ben Bollen]

100% pattern recognition. So in the reading program department for OED, we've got 50 lexicographers, and they read almost every possible thing that can be read. And I agree with you. Reluctantly, this probably goes into large language models. At this point, we're not talking just novels, newspapers, should any still exist. We're talking about transcripts from TV and song lyrics and magazines and social media. And now we return with super producer Max.

[Max Williams]

Give us a. I got some surprises right here. I was not expecting this either, but a. A cravat is kind of an umbrella term that includes things like bow ties, ascots, and actual ties.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, so there's a Venn diagram situation.

[Max Williams]

Yeah. Well, so no, like it's actually. It's.

[Noel Brown]

It's a catch up.

[Max Williams]

It's okay. It's a flowchart.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah, it's like how all mazes are puzzles, but not all puzzles are mazes.

[Noel Brown]

But in this case, all cr. No, right. Exactly.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Exactly.

[Ben Bollen]

Got it.

[Max Williams]

So, yeah, ties and ascots are both cravats. But just because it's a cravat doesn't mean it's a tie.

[Noel Brown]

There you go. Love that. Oh, my God.

[Ben Bollen]

That's the best we got there, guys.

[Noel Brown]

In a hot minute.

[Max Williams]

An ascot is a formal necktie worn with a morning dress, tied with a rudimentary knot, worn over the shirt and secured with a pin. It says style cravat. That is from bespoke unit.

[Noel Brown]

Okay. It's the kind of thing you'd see a Dracula wear.

[Ben Bollen]

Yes. All right. And we're gonna quit while we're ahead, Max with the facts. Okay, so we're back. We're reading. We're in the reading department. Dream job for some people, nightmare job for others. And while we're reading, Noel, we're on the lookout for the newest words. We see. Toronto slang.

[Noel Brown]

We do.

[Ben Bollen]

We send it to our little database.

[Noel Brown]

Yep. They do a little fact check. Check out the prevalence of the usage. Right. These editors spend a lot of time manually going through this stuff, reading all published materials, checking the automated scans, I guess, of all of this stuff that they find in databases and I imagine online, because that's. Gosh. I mean, that's where most language is curated these days, it would seem. Not most, but if you look at. We're going to get to it at the end. The words of the year, so many of them in the last handful of years have been almost entirely Internet related.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah. So like you were saying, the editor that gets this stuff from the database is going to go back toward a specific word and say, how long has it been in use? How popular, how prevalent is this term? For our buddies at Oxford, there's kind of a rule of thumb still a bit ad hoc. We call it the triple five rule. To get into the dictionary, to be considered for that halcyon space, your word has to be in print five times in five different sources over a period of five years. Triple five rule. And Noel, I love what you're pointing out because pre social media, that was a high bar, but now post social media, that's one weird day on Twitter or TikTok.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, absolutely. And I mean, words come and go as we're going to get to. And now more than ever, because not all words are Slang, of course, all slang are words. And inherent in the idea of slang is that it's a bit of a flash in the pan, and we just blast through those these days.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah. And Oxford in particular. I mean, all the major dictionaries, they're doing their best not to be unconsciously repetitive. So when you get a word, you get a word from your database. You're the editor, you say, oh, it's in print five times. Oh, it's from five different sources. Oh, this has been going on for at least five years. Your next step is to check something called the Oxford English Corpus. This is another database. It collects everything published across the Internet. We're talking, like 2.5 billion words of 21st century English, of course, and that's always growing.

[Noel Brown]

So while the specifics of this process can vary from case to case, there are other dictionaries, of course, that do something very similar as we've already described, like, Merriam Webster has their methods, Cambridge has their methods, et cetera. So this is where you sometimes see. Look, these dictionaries, especially now, they are still kind of online publications, and they're looking to make some headlines. So when they pick that Word of the Year, it's a little bit of a PR move. It's a little bit of a. Like, we're the ones that are defining the zeitgeist this time, you know, and you look at the competing publications, let's call them, and you start to see that I'm trying to kind of differentiate themselves.

[Ben Bollen]

Oh, yeah, no kidding, man. And I want to lean on you for your. For your German acumen here. The idea of Word of the year began in 1971 in Germany, and they called it Vortes jaris.

[Noel Brown]

Just means Word of the Year.

[Ben Bollen]

You nailed it, though.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. Thank you. I just tried to get the accent as best I could. It literally translates to word the year des means of the more or less.

[Ben Bollen]

That's surprising that Germany doesn't have all of it condensed into one crazy phrase.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, they certainly do for a lot of concepts like Farfig, Nugent, and, you know, which is one of my favorites, which is like a collective guilt around the Holocaust.

[Ben Bollen]

Oh, that took a turn.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, sorry.

[Ben Bollen]

It's a perfect example. Yeah, it's my favorite example.

[Noel Brown]

It's my favorite favorite one. So, to my point earlier, I think a little bit, you can't really capture all the complexity of what happens in the span of a year with a single word. But again, it just goes to show the ways that all of these various organizations are trying to kind of be the one that gets it the closest.

[Ben Bollen]

And you are so right about the PR aspect. And I would argue it's kind of like dendochronology, folks. Stay tuned.

[Noel Brown]

Remind me what that means.

[Ben Bollen]

The study of tree rings.

[Noel Brown]

That's the one.

[Ben Bollen]

Yes, of course. Where you see history writ large. If you ever want to be humbled, folks, go get thee to the nearest stump. Yes, get thee to thy nearest stump.

[Noel Brown]

Don't cut one down, though. Look for one that's already been cut.

[Ben Bollen]

Figure out which year in the ring you were born as, and then go to the current year. It's humbling when you see a redwood or something like that and remember how long these conversations or these lives continue similar to the English language. Look, let's say we got Flargle in there. We're obviously incredibly excited about our possibilities. We're waking up. We learn one day that the word we created, like flargle or schlop Fizzo. I was on one with that one. Or doppelgang banger. That's inappropriate. Whatever else you created.

[Noel Brown]

More of a pun, really.

[Ben Bollen]

More of a pun or a portmanteau.

[Noel Brown]

I love a portmanteau.

[Ben Bollen]

So now we're in the oed. The Merriam Webster, Anything but Urban Dictionary. We're riding high. We feel like Kanye west post late graduation. You cannot tell me nothing back when.

[Noel Brown]

He was still normal. Ish.

[Podcast Announcer]

Ish.

[Ben Bollen]

Back before we do him as well as we do.

[Noel Brown]

What is it? What is it? Oh, gosh. I'm not comparing Kanye to Hitler, Although he would do that himself. Norm MacDonald says about Hitler, the more I learn about this guy, the more I don't like him.

[Ben Bollen]

Right, Norm? Gosh, what a legend. Okay, here's the thing, though. And Noel, I think this is what we were alluding to a bit. You can't get too big for of britches. We have to remember that thousands of new words and new use cases can make it into a dictionary. But every year, those same dictionaries also are going to remove some words like.

[Noel Brown]

Schlop, fizzo and doppelgangbanger.

[Ben Bollen]

Right, right. Or for example, it sort of fell.

[Noel Brown]

Out of fashion, you know?

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah. They were like, come on, man.

[Noel Brown]

But Ben, they did have a golden moment. And that moment was 1999.

[Ben Bollen]

There it was. Yeah. Prince was all over the radio. What a time.

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[Jenna Kim Jones]

Breaking news everybody. Not everything is terrible. I repeat, not everything is terrible. The Ripple Effect with Jenna Kim Jones is proof that the Internet, it hasn't ruined humanity entirely.

[Ben Bollen]

Let me start by saying it's a great day to be a gray shirt team Rubicon. You know, it truly is a team. Those folks, myself included, all had one desire, which is helping folks in disaster. Trying to be a little bit of hope in a really really bad situation.

[Jenna Kim Jones]

It's like magic you guys. So put down your doom scroller and pick up your faith in humanity and join me, Jenna for the Ripple Effect. It's a reminder that you can start a ripple that changes everything. You really can.

[Podcast Announcer]

We give just that nugget of hope helping other people. For some of our gray shirts, it's during a time when they need help and by helping others it helps them.

[Jenna Kim Jones]

Listen to the Ripple Effect with Jenna Kim Jones on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Podcast Announcer]

For period protection you can put on and forget about nothing. Beats NYX Leak proof underwear. North America's number one leak proof underwear brand. Let's face it, life can be unpredictable, but your leak proof underwear shouldn't be. That's why millions of people choose NYX for periods, for light leaks, for everyday freshness. NYX undies are super comfy, super absorbent and made to handle whatever your day throws at you. Day two of your period covered your daily run. No problem. That big sneeze? You know the one? Yup, we've got you. And with styles like bikinis, boy shorts, thongs and high rise plus sizes from extra small to 4XL, NYX makes it easy to find your perfect fit. Say goodbye to stress and leaks and say hello to undies that work just as hard as you do, no matter the leak. Find the style and level of protection you [e-mail] and use code flow15 for 15% off. That's knix.com code flo15 for 15% off. Nix for your leaks for your life.

[Sponsor Announcer]

Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index, and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like EFTs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member finra SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosure available at public.com Disclosures.

[Ben Bollen]

Miriam Webster has cut words in the past. We've got some examples. Stern, forebost, Hodad, Snally Goster.

[Noel Brown]

That sounds like a Willy Wonka word. Stylopodium.

[Ben Bollen]

Stylopodium makes sense, right?

[Noel Brown]

Does it? Is it a type of lectern?

[Ben Bollen]

Where is it where you put a writing instrument? It's no Snally goster. It's definitely no.

[Noel Brown]

Stylopodium might well be the little thing you stick your pen in on the like, you know, the clipboard, right? I don't know.

[Ben Bollen]

Let's see.

[Noel Brown]

It's just context. Gluing it.

[Ben Bollen]

Oh, we are totally wrong.

[Podcast Announcer]

What is it?

[Ben Bollen]

It is an enlargement at the base of the style of flowers in certain plants of the parsley.

[Noel Brown]

Boring.

[Ben Bollen]

I know.

[Noel Brown]

No wonder it got mixed. Yeah, no one was referring to that part. It's just too specific.

[Ben Bollen]

No one was looking at a bunch of beautiful flowers and going, we should admire the stylopodium.

[Noel Brown]

Maybe flower scientists were. And that does bring up a point. There are obviously words that are considered more jargon or very, very, very industry focused. Do those make it into the dictionary? Or is there like a separate list of like super niche industry specific, like science words and like, you know, stuff involving a specific industry and by the way, Ben, I completely concur with what you've put here in this outline. We've got to bring back Hodad. Do we know what hodad even meant? I really want to know. Inquiring minds. Is it like a doodad?

[Ben Bollen]

It's your grandpa's dongle. No, it's vintage surf slang. It's slang. It's someone who Shows up to the beach and has a surfboard but never actually goes.

[Noel Brown]

That's amazing. Hodad specifically. And there's a. It looks like there's a well known surf shop also called Hodad, which is obviously I'm pretty funny.

[Ben Bollen]

That reminds me of Ugle with train kids. Anyway, yeah, so we know, we know folks. Max, if you could give us like a sad crowd size. Some words do have to go and that is okay because it may sound cruel to throw these words out, but we have to remember, Noel, you and I have talked about this a lot off air. English is a living language, right? Communication is key, not fancy spelling, et cetera. English. And the people who are speaking it already living language, they're trying to figure out that old technology of communication. What are the first three great games? And that means the dictionaries arguably have to change with that conversation.

[Noel Brown]

No doubt. And by the way, Hodad's was a. A small chain of burger joints in San Diego, not a surf shop.

[Ben Bollen]

Are they still open?

[Noel Brown]

I think so, yeah. Established 1973. Better. Tasty burger.

[Ben Bollen]

We gotta go get our tasty burgers, man.

[Noel Brown]

I love a California burger.

[Ben Bollen]

I do too. They are better. So we, we can't leave you without a dope phrase to step to. Here are, as we've been teasing, words of the year from five major dictionaries across 2025. And folks, we love Noel's point there about how you can see just like tree rings, you can see large patterns of social change just through these phrases over top.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. And you are occasionally going to get some doubles. So we'll just go through these respectively Dictionary.com, merriam, Webster, Collins, Oxford and Cambridge to try to just remember the order. We'll probably discuss a little bit, some specific ones. But from 2020, if you can imagine, pandemic, pandemic lockdown. Oxford didn't choose a word because I guess they thought everything was too f.

[Ben Bollen]

Well, they couldn't get to the office.

[Noel Brown]

They threw their hands up. Cambridge went with quarantine. So pandemic, pandemic lockdown. Quarantine, what a year.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah, go to 2021. We've got allyship vaccine, NFT vax with an X and perseverance from our friends at Cambridge.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, that's really positive. Let's keep onwards and upwards. Cambridge, 2022. We've got woman. Oh, come on.

[Ben Bollen]

Dictionary.com.

[Noel Brown]

That is hilarious. Is dictionaries.com has got some kind of dumb ones. I'm sorry, I'm not. I'm just saying like every, every Year Woman. Really? I mean that's weird. That's almost insulting. A little.

[Ben Bollen]

It was there earlier.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, 100%. They've been here for years. Don't call it a comeback. Gaslighting is 2022. Kind of the. The year of Me too, definitely. Okay. That's so funny and reductive just to have it be woman.

[Ben Bollen]

The worst joke about that one by the way is actually it's pronounced Jas. Lighting. It's terrible.

[Noel Brown]

Perma Crisis. That's relatable. Goblin mode. I remember that one. That's technically two words though. Oxford. I guess you could make it a onesie. And homer. Yeah, there's all these weird little outliers. That's from a Cambridge. Throwing another curveball. What happened in 2023? This is a very AI and starting to get into the brain rot of it all.

[Ben Bollen]

Yeah. Then we've got hallucinate. Authentic AI Riz. And Cambridge comes in swooping with Dictionary.com and they say also hallucinate word of the year.

[Noel Brown]

And that's of course referring to the thing AI does when it just makes stuff up to 2024. We've got demure. I had a moment Polarization brat, which I love. Charlie. XCX forever. Brain rot from Oxford. That was the one that made strange news. I think we definitely talked about that on the pod. Something I want you to know. Strange news episode and manifest Cambridge.

[Ben Bollen]

And then we get to 2025, the most recent year. Dictionary.com says six, seven.

[Noel Brown]

Those are numbers. Dictionary.com yeah, those are numbers.

[Ben Bollen]

Six, seven.

[Noel Brown]

Not even spelled out. They're just the numbers with a dash. I don't. I think that's absurd. We got Slop.

[Max Williams]

That's Miriam Webster, just Merriam Webster saying what Dictionary.com's worth of the year was.

[Ben Bollen]

And then we've got Collins with vibe coding. I know, yeah.

[Noel Brown]

And Parasocial, which is very podcast centric.

[Ben Bollen]

And Cambridge. That's. That's courtesy of our friends at Cambridge.

[Noel Brown]

Cambridge is a little more nuanced in their picks, wouldn't you agree?

[Ben Bollen]

I would absolutely agree.

[Noel Brown]

I think I like their takes the best in a lot of ways.

[Ben Bollen]

Oh come on. Perseverance.

[Noel Brown]

Perseverance is cool. I would love to see the data backing that one up though. It's like what context are people just throwing that word around in 2021?

[Ben Bollen]

It's the word they wanted to bring to the masses, to be honest. We also know, Noel, that there are regular polls and rankings very non scientific, very self reporting of the quote unquote quote worst or most misliked words in English. I think we all know a couple of characters from this rogues gallery. Moist. Always phlegm.

[Noel Brown]

Word aversions. Right. Phlegm. Ointment. I would also argue unguent, which is a sister word to ointment. Panties and slurp.

[Ben Bollen]

Slurp at.

[Noel Brown]

You don't love slurp, but that would be an onomatopoeia. Slurp describing the sound of sucking up, you know, stuff into your mouth.

[Ben Bollen]

Right, Right. And we talked a little bit off air with our with our brother in arms, Max about about favorite and non favorite words. You nailed it with word aversion. Noel, do you have a favorite word?

[Noel Brown]

Flargle.

[Ben Bollen]

Well done. Oh my gosh. That's it folks. This is our show. Thank you so much for joining us for a very meta episode where we use words to talk about words. Good luck getting into the dictionary. Our last riddle for today is the following. Can you guess the most common word in the English language?

[Noel Brown]

It's probably an article. I think we talked about this. Is it A or the? Did I get it? Am I close?

[Ben Bollen]

You nailed it, man. It's the most common word in the English language. You folks are just the best. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. We cannot wait to hang out with you more in the future. Now you often hear us refer to as you show called stuff they don't want you to know which we do with our brothers in arms, Matt, Frederick and Dylan the Tennessee pal Fagan. You can find us on Netflix.

[Noel Brown]

It's crazy. It's true. We just started doing that in the new year. Coming to a Netflix tab near you, look for podcasts. I think you can actually already go and subscribe sort of or hit the little bell to get notifications. But yeah, we're doing a new thing on Netflix. They're trying to bring podcasts into the fold. So we're doing two of our weekly episodes, the kind of deep dive topic driven episodes of stuff they don't want you to know as video as well that you can find on Netflix coming very soon.

[Ben Bollen]

And big, big thanks of course to our super producer, Mr. Max Williams.

[Noel Brown]

Flargo. Williams.

[Ben Bollen]

Mr. Max Flargle. Williams. Perfect. Hey Max. Favorite non favorite word. What do you got that Wait.

[Max Williams]

Favorite non favorite word or just favorite word.

[Ben Bollen]

Favorite word, non favorite word.

[Noel Brown]

Andor.

[Max Williams]

Oh so before and I think Noel wasn't on the call yet, but my favorite word is Q because it is just, it is just like the leftover parts of a word. They're like, ah, let's put a. Let's put a Q and a U and then, I don't know, an E and then what else?

[Noel Brown]

I can never remember how to spell correctly.

[Max Williams]

I think it's the only word in the English language.

[Noel Brown]

Q, U, E, U, E. Yes.

[Max Williams]

Four straight vowels.

[Ben Bollen]

No. You nailed it. No one.

[Max Williams]

The other one I have is bookkeeper because it is double O, double K, double E, double P in a row.

[Noel Brown]

You know what they say the most beautiful word in the English language is. Guys.

[Ben Bollen]

Cellar door.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. Donnie Darko forever guys.

[Ben Bollen]

This is just such a weird language. The English language is spoken today as a non consensus eventual game of piracy and improv. And thank you for sailing the high linguistic seas with us. Big, big thanks of course to Jonathan Strickland, AKA the Quizzter, a fellow etymology enthusiast.

[Noel Brown]

Long may he reign over his fiefdom of lies. That was good.

[Ben Bollen]

Big thanks to Dr. Rachel Big Spinach. Lance AJ, Bahamas, Jacob. Who else?

[Noel Brown]

Christopher Osiota. Steve Shepko here in spirit, of course. And you, Ben. What a great research doc this was. We'll be coming back soon with some more ridiculous history for all of you fine people out there. We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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[Noel Brown]

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[Podcast Announcer]

At cvs, it matters that we're not just in your community, but that we're part of it. It matters that we're here for you when you need us, day or night, and we want everyone to feel welcomed and rewarded. It matters that CVS is here to fill your prescriptions and here to fill your craving for a tasty and, yeah, healthy snack. At cvs, we're proud to serve your community because we believe where you get your medicine matters. So Visit [e-mail] or just come by our store. We can't wait to meet you. Store hours vary by location. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.