This Web site takes visitors to the American Heritage Book of English Usage, which is a guide to current problems and debates in English language usage that will be valuable for native and non-native speakers alike. The work may be searched by keyword, or users may elect to browse through its 10 chapters. The subjects covered by the various chapters include gender, science terms, e-mail, word...

Have you ever encountered a bloat of hippos or a charm of finches? This entertaining website, created by researcher and educator Melissa Kaplan, provides various descriptive terms for an extensive list of animals. Part 1 of the site contains plurals, collective nouns, and words for sounds, gender, and offspring. For example, a female kangaroo is a flyer, and a young swan is cygnet. Part 2 offers...

Bartleby.com (see the March 24, 2000 Scout Report) has recently placed this new work online. It is E. Cobham Brewer's 1898 Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, a collection of more than 18,000 entries "that reveal the etymologies, trace the origins and otherwise catalog 'words with a tale to tell.'" The entries can be browsed alphabetically or searched by keyword.

While the phrase "never say never" may make some think of a certain suave British spy of the silver screen, to wordsmiths this is a thoroughly noxious example of an oxymoron. Strictly speaking, an oxymoron is a literary figure of speech in which opposite or contradictory words, terms, phrases or ideas are combined to create a rhetorical effect by paradoxical means. For those with a budding love of...