Martha Stewart Living Radio: The Radio Blog

Sabotage means to throw someone else’s plan off course. Think of a sabotage as an obstruction. But sabotage is actually French for walking loudly. Remember the sabot? This …

Use discrete when you’re talking about things that are separate and distinct. Your car, for example, comprises many discrete parts. This is related to discern, meaning to distinguish …

Tomatoes are grown around the world, but they’re native to South America. In their native habitat, several hundred years ago, tomatoes were anything but sought after. They were …

Something picayune is petty, frivolous, or trivial. Something picayunish is small in size or stature. Picayune is not English but American French, popularized among Cajun speakers after arriving …

A curriculum is a series of classes that make up a course of study. But originally a curriculum involved a course in the track-and-field sense. In Latin, a …

A student is identified by her quest for knowledge. The only entrance requirement to be a student is that you study. And studying implies that you’re really devoting …

If you scored well on a test, you’ve passed it. In this case, we’re talking about the verb pass. That –ed ending means the verb is in the …

Today’s class begins in the early days of Rome, known as the Regal Period. The Servian Constitution divided Rome’s citizens into six divisions based on wealth. Each division …