anthimeria

Calvin’s famous proclamation that “Verbing weirds language” is not only true and heavily used of late, but there’s a word for it: anthimeria. More than likely you employ this figure of speech in your everyday language, friending someone while facebooking or perhaps ebaying for an anniversary gift.

Also, does anyone know a word that means “the belief that a word should have a particular meaning based on its appearance”?

pilcrow

This is the name of the paragraph mark used in editing. Now I’m dying to know if some clever cookie has come up with names for the infinity symbol (besides “lemniscate“) and the graphic used to show breaks inside chapters.

sphygmomanometer

This is the proper name for a blood pressure taker. Who knew?