Everyone's familiar with déjà vu - everyone would have experienced it at some stage in your life. It's a disconcerting flash of recognition of something you know you've never seen before, yet still feels all too familiar. Less people know about this term's sister, jamais vu: but it's a great descriptor for another weird mind trick that's just as trippy to experience.

Decimated has historically meant to remove one tenth of something reflecting the Roman punishment of killing one in ten soldiers in under-performing legions. Today it is often used to describe something being significantly damaged or destroyed. Which usage is correct? Well, both.

Chuck on your bathers, we're going down to the beach. We've packed some fritz for lunch, we'll hit the fish'n'chip shop to grab some potato fritters and afterwards we're going to head to the playground and jump on the slippery dip. Don't forget to top up your water bottle at the drinking fountain.

Does that paragraph make any sense to you? If not, it's probably because it's filled with words specific to my South Aussie lexicon.

Say you're looking up the Möbius strip on Wikipedia and you wonder how it's pronounced. Wikipedia only shows some elaborate pronunciation guide written in the International Phonetic Alphabet. You could start googling it in another tab, but there's an easy way to translate that pronunciation guide into plain English. Just hover over the letters.

In my six semesters as an English major, this is the best thing I learned: When in doubt, put the best bit of a sentence at the end, the next-best bit at the beginning and the rest in the middle. So in order of bestness, that's 2, then 3, then 1.

We all know the rule: "I before E, except after C..." except... uh... something. Good news: You can forget everything except the "I before E" part. And even that will only help you guess correctly three times out of four.

When you're writing, adjectives give you the most flexibility to create a vivid picture. It's also easy to slip into a cliche series of mundane, familiar adjectives. Describing Words helps inspire you with something different.

Today, the Australian National Dictionary received its first update in 28 years. More than 6000 Australian words, phrases and idioms have been added, including 'battered sav', 'chiko roll', 'babyccino', 'goon bag' and 'bogan'. Here are some official "dinki di" phrases that made the cut.

It's right on the tip of your tongue. You know it's there. It's when you intensely dislike something. When your brain can't quite pick out the word you need, OneLook Reverse Dictionary can look the word up by its definition.