If you're interested in "words"--in what they mean, how to use them, and where they came from--you're in luck on the Internet.

Have you ever wondered where phrases such as "bite the bullet" or "kiss of death" came from? At the Origin of Phrases, you'll learn that the term "raining cats and dogs" may have originated from the time of the bubonic plague in London, where cats and dogs were also afflicted, many dying in the streets. After a particularly hard rain, street gutters would be flooded with the bodies of cats and dogs.

An excellent site for exploring the English language is the World Wide Word Home Page. The page is devoted to the English language, to "its history, quirks, curiosities and evolution." Click on Weird Words to learn of odd words such as "eleemosynary," which means "charitable." Submit a question to learn the origin of certain phrases or words, or study words or phrases that aren't in dictionaries yet, like "genetic pollution."

At the Literary Dictionary, you can study words that first made an appearance in books, plays, poems, comic strips, and mythology. For example, the word "accept" first appeared in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in 1387. "Aerial" first appeared in William Shakespeare's Othello in 1604.

Visit The Quotations Page where you can read motivational quotes of the day, or even contribute a favorite quotation. Search the site by keyword to find quotations that use that word from among twelve different quotation sources. A search for "computer" brought this quote, among others: "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers," by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973).

The Web of On-line Dictionaries offers more than 800 dictionaries in 160 different languages. Whoa. The site also includes thesauri and other vocabulary aids, such as acronym dictionaries, synonym dictionaries, rhyming dictionaries, and more. It's a very impressive site.

At the Phrase Finder, you can insert a word, and it will return a set of phrases that are related to the word in some way. Or, you can browse their complete list of phrases, including their meanings and derivations.

Finally, for a listing of links to sites that "feature fun with words," visit Word Play. Among the numerous links too many to count, you'll find a link to Puzzlemaker, a site that lets you create customized puzzles such as word search, criss-cross, cryptograms, fallen phrases, and more.

Robin Nobles is a freelance writer who can be reached at robinnobles@robinsnest.com.

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