Put down your wands and open a dictionary. While we're all still waiting for our Hogwarts letters to arrive, most Harry Potter fans already know several basic spells to help them through the wizarding ...

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What is a placebo? Technically, a Latin phrase meaning “I will please.” It’s also a Catholic prayer and a clever insult. Use of the word ‘placebo’ in a medical context is more recent than you might ...

People sometimes tell you you’re misusing a word and cite the Latin origin as proof. Don’t fall for the etymological fallacy. What a word means depends not on its origin, but on how speakers of a ...