Even though you're listening to this on podcast and not on the air, you can still call our toll-free number 877929-9673.

And you can still send us email to Words at waywardradio.org.

And you can still find us online at waywardradio.org.

You're listening to Away with Words. I'm Grant Barrett.

And I'm Martha Barnett. I was reading a magazine article the other day, and I came across the following sentence.

There's a strangely adivistic slant to British political culture at this moment.

And I had to put down the magazine, go to the dictionary, and yet again, look up the word atavistic. Grant, I think there ought to be a word for those words

that keep sending you to the dictionary again and again and again because you can't remember the

meaning. Tell me that I'm not the only person who has this problem. I know you're not the only

person. Everyone has this problem, right? Because it solves the problem for the moment, but for some reason it doesn't stick. It doesn't stick. Why doesn't it stick? You know, I've learned to just sort of stop and wrestle that word by the seraphs. I mean, in the case of addivistic, I finally thought, okay, this is it. I'm going to figure out this word and I'm going to make it my own. It means reverting to or suggesting the characteristics of a remote ancestor or primitive type. And the way that I made it stick in my head is that I figured out that the A-V-V-I-V-I-V-S is related to the Latin word spelled A-V-U-S, which means grandfather. It's a relative of the Spanish word, Abuelo, which means grandfather. So if you think of grandfather, then that helps you so often. Yeah, the etymology. But do you have words like that that send you back to the dictionary?

Mine's a little different.

I just wanted to share this.

This happened to me recently.

I found out that I've been using a word wrong my whole life.

I really?

I'm 40.

It's a little different.

And it's the kind of thing that you can only find out by looking it up.

I didn't know that upwards of means more than.

Really?

I always thought that upwards of meant up to. And so I'm reading this and talking with a

colleague and we're talking about something like upwards of 30,000 books in the library. And I'm

...