Dorothy is a listener with a problem: The misusage of the words hung and hanged is killing her sanity. For Dorothy, it seems like many people can’t tell the difference between the two words to save their lives. But, as it turns out, the distinction may be just that simple. “The verb hang has two past tenses,” says University of Michigan English Professor Anne Curzan, “one of which is lethal.”

What comes to mind when you think of something being "full of teeth?" For many people, it’s probably a creepy image, like a shark’s mouth or a root canal. But as it turns out, the English word “toothsome” means the opposite. “It’s a good thing,” says University of Michigan English Professor Anne Curzan. To understand why, we may have to rethink our understanding of the word “tooth.”