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Call it the Super Bowl of Spelling. This week, a record 516 pint-sized spellers are sweating out their ABCs in the Maryland Ballroom of the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, hoping to be crowned the 2018 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion. You may know how to spell "victory," but here are 25 things you might not know about the country's best-known gathering of logophiles.

1. IT WAS ORGANIZED BY A NEWSPAPER.

The National Spelling Bee was inaugurated in 1925 by Kentucky's Louisville Courier-Journal as a way to consolidate a number of local spelling bees and generate "general interest among pupils in a dull subject." (Cash prizes have a tendency to do that.) The E.W. Scripps Company didn't take ownership of the Bee until 1941.

2. FRANK NEUHAUSER WAS THE BEE'S FIRST OFFICIAL CHAMPION.

Neuhauser, an 11-year-old from Louisville, Kentucky, beat out eight other finalists to become the National Spelling Bee's first champion. His word for the win? Gladiolus. Yes, the flower. On March 22, 2011, Neuhauser-a retired lawyer- passed away at his home in Silver Spring, Maryland at the age of 97.

3. IN 1926, PAULINE BELL BECAME THE FIRST FEMALE CHAMPION.

In the Bee's second year, it declared its first female winner, Pauline Bell, who won by correctly spelling the color cerise. Bell kicked off a trend of female winners: Of the Spelling Bee's 93 champions, 48 of them have been girls. This year, 45 percent of the competitors are girls.

4. THERE WERE NO WINNERS IN 1943, 1944, OR 1945.

That's because the Spelling Bee was put on hold during World War II.

5. THERE WERE TWO WINNERS ON SIX OCCASIONS

Co-champions have long been a possibility at the National Spelling Bee, and were a reality in 1950, 1957, 1962, 2014, 2015, and 2016, when 11-year-old Nihar Janga of Austin, Texas, and 13-year-old Jairam Hathwar of Corning, New York, both walked away winners. To prevent this continuing trend, the Bee changed the rules in 2017 by requiring all of the spellers still standing at 6 p.m. on the Bee's final day to complete a written test to be used to break a tie.

6. THE BEE WAS FIRST TELEVISED IN 1946.

The Bee's national finals were first broadcast live on NBC in 1946. Portions of the Spelling Bee have since been broadcast on PBS and ABC as well. But since 1994, ESPN has been the Bee's biggest champion, broadcasting near-constant spelling action throughout the entire competition.

7. NO ONE REALLY KNOWS WHERE THE WORD "BEE" COMES FROM.

According to the folks at Scripps:

"The word 'bee,' as used in 'spelling bee,' is one of those language puzzles that has never been satisfactorily accounted for. A fairly old and widely-used word, it refers to a community social gathering at which friends and neighbors join together in a single activity (sewing, quilting, barn raising, etc.) usually to help one person or family.

"The earliest known example in print is a spinning bee, in 1769 ... Spelling bee is apparently an American term. It first appeared in print in 1875, but it seems certain that the word was used orally for several years before that."

8. MERRIAM-WEBSTER'S UNABRIDGED DICTIONARY IS THE SPELLING BEE BIBLE.

With more than 472,000 word entries, it's the official dictionary [ PDF] of the Scripps National Spelling Bee-and the only one that counts in terms of spelling.

9. KIDS ARE GIVEN A TOTAL OF TWO MINUTES TO SPELL A WORD.

The countdown begins when the pronouncer first pronounces the word.

10. "KNAIDEL" CAUSED A CONTROVERSY IN 2013.

In 2013, New Yorker Arvind Mahankali won the competition by spelling the word "knaidel," another word for matzo ball. While a number of Yiddish speakers claimed that Mahankali's spelling was incorrect, the then-13-year-old's spelling of the word was the same as Merriam-Webster's, leading the event's organizers to declare that there was no controversy at all.

11. A TRAFFIC LIGHT HELPS SPELLERS KEEP TRACK OF THE TIME.

Spellers have the benefit of viewing a monitor with a traffic light to keep track of time. For the first 75 seconds, the traffic light is green, followed by 15 seconds of yellow. At the 30-second mark, the light turns red and a countdown clock appears. Neither the judges nor the pronouncer can communicate with the speller once the monitor has shifted into "red light mode."

12. PRONOUNCER DR. JACQUES BAILLY IS A CHAMPION SPELLER, TOO.

For the past 16 years, Dr. Jacques Bailly has served as the Spelling Bee's official pronouncer, and was an associate pronouncer for 12 years before that. But his history with the Spelling Bee goes back even further-all the way back to 1980, when he won the whole shebang at the age of 14 by correctly spelling elucubrate.

13. DR. BAILLY DOESN'T PLAY FAVORITES.

"I always want them to get all the words right," Bailly told TIME in 2009 about sympathizing with the entire lineup of spellers. "I think that's a lot of the fun of the spelling bee-you root for everybody. And I try to make it clear to the spellers that I'm there to give them absolutely every possible thing that I can to help them-within some limits." In fact, it's part of Bailly's job to help the speller. If he has some word information that he senses could be helpful to the speller, he can offer it up without the speller requesting it.

14. THEY TAKE "THE GIGGLE FACTOR" INTO ACCOUNT.

In a 2003 interview with the St. Petersburg Times, Bailly admitted that in the days leading up to the final event, Spelling Bee officials review every word for a final time and take into account something they call "the giggle factor," explaining that "A word like 'titillation' might cause a sixth-, seventh- or eighth-grader to giggle."

15. THE FIRST RULE OF THE SPELLING BEE WORD COMMITTEE IS YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT THE SPELLING BEE WORD COMMITTEE.

Though there is a committee of officials who approve all the words that will be used in any year's competition, "The first rule of the committee is not admitting that you're on the committee," Bee spokesman Chris Kemper told TIME in 2013. "The committee is the secret sauce of the spelling bee and the identity of those on the committee will not be revealed."

16. BUT DR. BAILLY IS A MEMBER.

"It is true that Jacques is on the word committee," Kemper admitted to ABC Denver in 2014. "But beyond that, the members of the team and their process is secret."

17. MISSPELLINGS AREN'T THE ONLY CAUSE FOR DISQUALIFICATION.

In addition to clearly misspelling a word, there are four other reasons a speller can be disqualified. These include not approaching the microphone when it's the speller's at-bat ("unless there are extenuating circumstances that, in the judges' sole discretion, merit holding the speller's word in reserve and offering it to the speller after all other spellers in the round have spelled and before the close of the round"); engaging in "unsportsmanlike conduct"; altering the letters or sequence of letters in the process of retracing a spelling; or uttering "unintelligible or nonsense sounds" during the spelling process.

18. THE SPELLING BEE REQUIRES MORE THAN JUST SPELLING.

In 2013, vocabulary questions were added to the preliminary rounds, a move that was met with criticism by some, who believe that a spelling bee should be a test of one's spelling ability only. But the Bee's executive director, Paige Kimble, says the change in procedure is one that helps reinforce the Bee's educational purpose. "What we know with the championship-level spellers is that they think of their achievement in terms of spelling and vocabulary being two sides of the same coin," Kimble told the Associated Press in 2013. "These spellers will be excited at the opportunity to show off their vocabulary knowledge through competition."

19. PAIGE KIMBLE AND DR. BAILLY GO WAY BACK.

When Dr. Bailly became the Spelling Bee champion back in 1980, it was Kimble (then known as Paige Pipkin) who he defeated. But all was not lost: She won the very next year, and has been working with the organization in a professional capacity since 1984.

20. "SCHWARMEREI" HAS KNOCKED OUT TWO FINALISTS.

This German origin noun, which means excessive sentimentality, has knocked out two finalists in recent years, once in 2004 and again in 2012. The former incident happened to 13-year-old Akshay Buddiga, who famously fainted on stage in the middle of spelling alopecoid earlier in the competition, only to get up and spell the word correctly.

21. "CONNOISSEUR" IS A WORD TO ANTICIPATE.

The French origin noun is the most frequent word on the Scripps National Spelling Bee word lists.

22. GOOD SPELLERS MAKE GREAT SCIENTISTS.

Jeffrey Blitz, who directed the 2002 Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound about the National Spelling Bee, told TIME how he observed that many Spelling Bee finalists go on to have careers in science and medicine. "Something about the kind of brain that's not intimidated by the dictionary in childhood seems well-suited to the work of medicine in adulthood," he noted.

23. MORE THAN ONE-FIFTH OF THIS YEAR'S SPELLERS ARE BEE VETS.

Of 2018's 516 competitors, 113 of them-nearly 22 percent-have competed previously at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

25. SIVASAIPRANEETHREDDY DEVIREDDY IS THIS YEAR'S YOUNGEST SPELLER.

In 2017, 5-year-old Edith Fuller became the Bee's youngest-ever speller. This year, 8-year-old Sivasaipraneethreddy Devireddy (Speller #383), from Mooresville, North Carolina, is the youngest competitor.
An earlier version of this article ran in 2014.

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7 Sentences That Sound Crazy But Are Still Grammatical

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Call it the Super Bowl of Spelling. This week, a record 516 pint-sized spellers are sweating out their ABCs in the Maryland Ballroom of the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, hoping to be crowned the 2018 Scripps National Spelling Bee champion.

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There's no way around it - English is a weird language. Because of its multitude of rules, many of which have exceptions or contradict one another, and its many synonyms and homonyms, it is one of the hardest languages in the world for non-speakers to learn (aside from Mandarin - eep!).

The 25 words on this list certainly don't make things any easier! They're called contronyms - words that are their own antonyms.

#25. Sanction

This word can mean 'give official approval for,' or conversely, 'impose a penalty upon.'

#24. Oversight

This is the noun form of two verbs with contrary meanings, 'oversee' and 'overlook.' Oversee means to supervise, while overlook means the opposite - to "fail to see or observe; to pass over without noticing; to disregard, ignore."

#23. Left

This word can mean either 'remaining' or 'departed.' Example: 'The men left the room', as opposed to 'there are five cupcakes left.'

#22. Dust

This noun turned into a verb (like the following 2 words) can mean either you are adding something or taking it away, depending on context. Examples: dusting the crops versus dusting the furniture.

#21. Seed

Same as above - context is everything. Are you seeding a fruit (removing) or seeding your garden (planting)?

#20. Stone

Again - you can stone a cherry, but you shouldn't stone your husband (even if you're mad at him for getting stoned. Heh.).

#19. Trim

Trimming something can either be cutting bits of it away, or adding decorations like lace or tinsel. You can trim a cake, but you also trim your bangs - opposite meanings depending on what, exactly, is being trimmed. And if you trim your christmas tree, no one knows what you are doing to it!

#18. Cleave

In the Bible, a husband is instructed to 'cleave' to his wife (cling), but we also know it means to split apart. Makes you wonder what exactly 'cleavage' is referring to, doesn't it?

#17. Resign

This word's two meanings are a little peculiar because they're actually pronounced differently, but, when written, it's hard to tell them apart. One means to quit (resign), the other to begin anew (re-sign).

#16. Fast

This word can mean 'moving quickly' or 'fixed and unmoving.' He's running fast, but the colors on his uniform are holding fast. Yikes.

#15. Off

Activated or deactivated? Depends on whether your alarm went off, or you turned off your alarm. This has to do mainly with which verbs the preposition 'off' is attached to, but it can still be mighty confusing to a non-native speaker.

#14. Weather

Did you weather (come safely through) a storm, or was your house weathered (worn away) during the rain? You decide.

#13. Screen

This one can mean either 'to show' (screen a film) or 'to hide' (screen your motives) depending on how you use it.

#12. Help

This one might be cheating, since it needs the qualifier 'can't.' You can help (assist) someone, but maybe you can't help (prevent) leaving them to their own devices.

#11. Clip

It can mean 'to bind together' (like your chip clip!) or 'to separate' (as in clipping your coupons).

#10. Continue

Usually, this means to keep doing something, but, if you use it in a courtroom, you'd be asking for permission to pause and pick up proceedings later.

#9. Fight With

A triple threat: 'argue with,' 'serve alongside,' or 'use in battle.'

#8. Flog

Two very different meanings from two disparate time periods. It used to be used as 'to beat or whip,' but now can be used to talk about promoting something (America Fererra was out flogging her new movie).

#7. Go

It can mean 'proceed' or 'give out or fail.' The first one is obvious, and you've probably heard the second used like, 'my old dog's hearing is starting to go.'

#6. Hold Up

This can mean 'to support' or 'to hinder.'

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There's no way around it - English is a weird language. Because of its multitude of rules, many of which have exceptions or contradict one another, and its many synonyms and homonyms, it is one of the hardest languages in the world for non-speakers to learn (aside from Mandarin - eep!).

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11 Words That Prove The English Language Is Meaningless And So Is Life So Let’s All Give Up

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11 Words That Prove The English Language Is Meaningless And So Is Life So Let’s All Give Up

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11 Words That Prove The English Language Is Meaningless And So Is Life So Let's All Give Up

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32 Of The Most Beautiful Words In The English Language

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32 Of The Most Beautiful Words In The English Language

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32 Of The Most Beautiful Words In The English Language

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Entirely eloquent, and yet utterly ineffable.

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15 Common Expressions Younger Generations Won't Understand

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15 Common Expressions Younger Generations Won't Understand

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William Shakespeare devised new words and countless plot tropes that still appear in everyday life. Famous quotes from his plays are easily recognizable; phrases like "To be or not to be," "wherefore art thou, Romeo," and "et tu, Brute?" instantly evoke images of wooden stages and Elizabethan costumes. But an incredible number of lines from his plays have become so ingrained into modern vernacular that we no longer recognize them as lines from plays at all. Here are 21 phrases you use but may not have known came from the Bard of Avon.

1. "WILD GOOSE CHASE" // ROMEO AND JULIET, ACT II, SCENE IV
"Nay, if our wits run the wild-goose chase, I am done, for thou hast more of the wild-goose in one of thy wits than, I am sure, I have in my whole five. Was I with you there for the goose?" - Mercutio
This term didn't originally refer to actual geese, but rather a type of horse race.

2. "GREEN-EYED MONSTER" // OTHELLO, ACT III, SCENE III
"O, beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on." - Iago
Before Shakespeare, the color green was most commonly associated with illness. Shakespeare turned the notion of being sick with jealousy into a metaphor that we still use today.

3. "PURE AS THE DRIVEN SNOW" // HAMLET, ACT III, SCENE I AND THE WINTER'S TALE, ACT IV, SCENE IV
"Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go." - Hamlet "Lawn as white as driven snow." - Autolycus
Though Shakespeare never actually used the full phrase "pure as the driven snow," both parts of it appear in his work. For the record, this simile works best right after the snow falls, and not a few hours later when tires and footprints turn it into brown slush.

4. "SEEN BETTER DAYS" // AS YOU LIKE IT, ACT II, SCENE VII
"True is it that we have seen better days and have with holy bell been knolled to church, and sat at good men's feasts and wiped our eyes of drops that sacred pity hath engendered." - Duke Senior
The first recorded use of "seen better days" actually appeared in Sir Thomas More in 1590, but the play was written anonymously, and is often at least partially attributed to Shakespeare. We do know Shakespeare was a fan of the phrase; he uses "seen better days" in As You Like It, and then again in Timon of Athens.

5. "OFF WITH HIS HEAD" // RICHARD III, ACT III, SCENE IV
"If? Thou protector of this damnèd strumpet, talk'st thou to me of "ifs"? Thou art a traitor-Off with his head." - Richard III
The Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland wasn't the first monarch with a penchant for liberating heads from bodies. Her famous catchphrase came from Shakespeare first.

6. "FOREVER AND A DAY" // AS YOU LIKE IT, ACT IV, SCENE I
"Now tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her." - Rosalind "Forever and a day" - Orlando
We have the Bard to thank for this perfect fodder for Valentine's Day cards and middle school students' love songs.

7. "GOOD RIDDANCE" // TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, ACT II, SCENE I
[Thersites exits] "A good riddance." - Patroclus
Where would Green Day be without Shakespeare's riposte? In addition to acoustic ballad titles, "good riddance" also applies well to exes, house pests (both human and insect), and in-laws.

8. "FAIR PLAY" // THE TEMPEST, ACT V, SCENE I
"Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle, and I would call it fair play." - Miranda
Prospero's daughter never would have been able to predict that "fair play" is used more often now in sports than it is for the negotiation of kingdoms.

9. "LIE LOW" // MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, ACT V, SCENE I
"If he could right himself with quarreling, some of us would lie low." - Antonio
Shakespeare's plays contain brilliant wisdom that still applies today. In "lie low," he concocted the perfect two-word PR advice for every celebrity embroiled in a scandal.

10. "IT'S GREEK TO ME" // JULIUS CAESAR, ACT I, SCENE II
"Nay, an I tell you that, Ill ne'er look you i' the face again: but those that understood him smiled at one another and shook their heads; but, for mine own part, it was Greek to me." - Casca
"It's all Greek to me" might possibly be the most intelligent way of telling someone that you have absolutely no idea what's going on.

11. "AS GOOD LUCK WOULD HAVE IT" // THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, ACT III, SCENE V
"As good luck would have it, comes in one Mistress Page; gives intelligence of Ford's approach; and, in her invention and Ford's wife's distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket." - Falstaff
Determining whether a Shakespeare play is a comedy or a tragedy can largely be boiled down to whether good luck would have anything for the characters.

12. "YOU'VE GOT TO BE CRUEL TO BE KIND" // HAMLET, ACT III, SCENE IV
"So, again, good night. I must be cruel only to be kind. Thus bad begins and worse remains behind." - Hamlet
Here's an idiom that proves just because a character in a Shakespeare play said it doesn't necessarily mean it's always true. Hamlet probably isn't the best role model, especially given the whole accidentally-stabbing-someone-behind-a-curtain thing.

13. "LOVE IS BLIND" // THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, ACT II, SCENE VI
"But love is blind, and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit, for if they could Cupid himself would blush to see me thus transformèd to a boy." - Jessica
Chaucer actually wrote the phrase ("For loue is blynd alday and may nat see") in The Merchant's Tale in 1405, but it didn't become popular and wasn't seen in print again until Shakespeare wrote it down. Now, "love is blind" serves as the three-word explanation for any seemingly unlikely couple.

14. "BE-ALL, END-ALL" // MACBETH, ACT I, SCENE VII
"If the assassination could trammel up the consequence, and catch with his surcease success; that but this blow might be the be-all and the end-all here, but here, upon this bank and shoal of time, we'd jump the life to come." - Macbeth
Macbeth uses the phrase just as he's thinking about assassinating King Duncan and, ironically, as anyone who's familiar with the play knows, the assassination doesn't turn out to be the "end all" after all.

15. "BREAK THE ICE" // THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, ACT I, SCENE II
"If it be so, sir, that you are the man must stead us all, and me amongst the rest, and if you break the ice and do this feat, achieve the elder, set the younger free for our access, whose hap shall be to have her will not so graceless be to be ingrate." - Tranio (as Lucentio)
If you want to really break the ice, the phrase appears to have come from Thomas North, whose translation of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans provided much of the inspiration for Shakespeare's ancient word plays. This is a great meta "did you know" fact for getting to know someone at speed dating.

16. "HEART OF GOLD" // HENRY V, ACT IV, SCENE I
"The king's a bawcock, and a heart of gold, a lad of life, an imp of fame, of parents good, of fist most valiant." - Pistol
Turns out, the phrase "heart of gold" existed before Douglas Adams used it as the name of the first spaceship to use the Infinite Improbability Drive in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

17. "KILL WITH KINDNESS" // THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, ACT IV, SCENE 1
"This is a way to kill a wife with kindness, and thus I'll curb her mad and headstrong humor." - Petruchio
The Shakespeare canon would contain a lot fewer dead bodies if his characters all believed they should kill their enemies with kindness instead of knives and poison.

18. "KNOCK, KNOCK! WHO'S THERE?" // MACBETH, ACT II, SCENE III
"Knock, knock! Who's there, in th' other devil's name?" - Porter
Though high school students suffering through English class may disagree, Shakespeare was a master of humor in his works, writing both slapstick comedy and sophisticated wordplay. And, as the Porter scene in Macbeth illustrates, he's also the father of the knock-knock joke.

19. "LIVE LONG DAY" // JULIUS CAESAR, ACT I, SCENE I
"To towers and windows, yea, to chimney tops, your infants in your arms, and there have sat the livelong day with patient expectation to see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome." - Mureless
Today, the phrase "live long day" is pretty much exclusively reserved for those who have been working on the railroad.

20. "YOU CAN HAVE TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING" // AS YOU LIKE IT, ACT IV, SCENE I
"Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?- Come, sister, you shall be the priest and marry us.-Give me your hand, Orlando.-What do you say, sister?" - Rosalind
Modern readers often call Shakespeare a visionary, far ahead of his time. For example: he was able to write about desiring too much of a good thing 400 years before chocolate-hazelnut spread was widely available.

21. "THE GAME IS AFOOT" // HENRY V, ACT III, SCENE I
"The game's afoot: follow your spirit, and upon this charge cry 'God for Harry, England, and Saint George!'" - King Henry V
Nope! It wasn't Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who coined this phrase-Sherlock Holmes' most famous catchphrase comes from Henry V, although both characters do often tend to find themselves around dead bodies.

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15 Common Expressions Younger Kids Won't Understand

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William Shakespeare devised new words and countless plot tropes that still appear in everyday life. Famous quotes from his plays are easily recognizable; phrases like "To be or not to be," "wherefore art thou, Romeo," and "et tu, Brute?" instantly evoke images of wooden stages and Elizabethan costumes.

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Teacher's Notes

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Student's Worksheet

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English is a versatile, beautiful, yet sometimes complicated language, but when you get down to it, some common phrases just don't make sense. I'm sure you've heard these 19 English phrases that make no sense.

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27 Brilliant Words You Didn’t Know You Needed

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27 Brilliant Words You Didn’t Know You Needed

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27 Brilliant Words You Didn't Know You Needed

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Entirely eglaf and utterly unlightening. Via Urban Dictionary.

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14 Perfect Japanese Words You Need In Your Life

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14 Perfect Japanese Words You Need In Your Life

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14 Perfect Japanese Words You Need In Your Life

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Get a bad hair cut? Japan has just the word.

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What Is 'gh' Doing in So Many English Words?

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What Is 'gh' Doing in So Many English Words?

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The midterm elections are just one day away, but for many working Americans, finding time to hit the polls this Tuesday will be a challenge. As Business Insider points out, some companies are required by law to grant their employees time off to vote, but it depends on which state you live in.

There's no federal law mandating time off for voters, and Election Day isn't a federal holiday like it is in some countries, including France and Mexico. However, most states have voter-leave laws-otherwise known as time-off-to-vote laws. Paid time off is mandated in 22 states, and unpaid time off is required in seven others. The outlier is Mississippi, which grants employees time off to vote but does not specify whether or not they will be compensated.

Of the states that offer paid time off, most allow employees to leave for two or three hours, which should cover any long lines voters may encounter. Some states stipulate that employees are allowed to leave for "as long as it reasonably takes to vote." Three of the five most populous states-California, Texas, and New York-offer paid time off. Florida and Pennsylvania, on the other hand, do not offer any time off at all.

The states that offer paid time off include: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

The states that offer unpaid time off are: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin.

Of the 20 states that aren't required to provide any time off, 11 are concentrated along the East Coast. Oregon and Washington technically don't offer any time off, but they're vote-by-mail states, so employees shouldn't need to leave work anyway.

Even if you live in a state that doesn't have a voter-leave law, you should still check with your employer to see if they will provide time off as a courtesy. According to Mic, nearly 250 companies have declared a company-wide holiday on Election Day or promised their employees paid time off to vote. These include Lyft, Etsy, Pinterest, Dropbox, Levi Strauss & Co., and Change.org, to name a few.

For more detailed information on how long you're allowed to leave the office for and what you need to know before doing so, check out Business Insider's article and map ( click to enlarge).

Know your voting rights when it comes to taking time off on election day! "In 30 states you can take time off from work to vote - here's the full list." From @businessinsider https://t.co/CVMkMRXJS2 #humanresources pic.twitter.com/S87SgEJQVe

- WorldatWork (@WorldatWork) November 4, 2018

Have you got a Big Question you'd like us to answer? If so, let us know by emailing us at bigquestions@mentalfloss.com.

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What Is 'gh' Doing in So Many English Words?

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Test your knowledge with amazing and interesting facts, trivia, quizzes, and brain teaser games on MentalFloss.com.

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English vocabulary is full of pitfalls that you might not be aware of. Don't let them trip you up.

1. INVARIABLY

If something happens invariably, it always happens. To be invariable is to never vary. The word is sometimes used to mean frequently, which has more leeway.

2. COMPRISE/COMPOSE

A whole comprises its parts. The alphabet comprises 26 letters. The U.S. comprises 50 states. But people tend to say is comprised of when they mean comprise. If your instinct is to use the is ... of version, then substitute composed. The whole is composed of its parts.

3. FREE REIN

The words rein and reign are commonly confused. Reign is a period of power or authority-kings and queens reign-and a good way to remember it is to note that the g relates it to royal words like regent and regal. A rein is a strap used to control a horse. The confusion comes in when the control of a horse is used as a metaphor for limits on power or authority. Free rein comes from such a metaphor. If you have free rein you can do what you want because no one is tightening the reins.

4. JUST DESERTS

There is only one s in the desert of just deserts. It is not the dessert of after-dinner treats nor the dry and sandy desert. It comes from an old noun form of the verb deserve. A desert is a thing which is deserved.

5. TORTUOUS/TORTUROUS

Tortuous is not the same as torturous. Something that is tortuous has many twists and turns, like a winding road or a complicated argument. It's just a description. It makes no judgment on what the experience of following that road or argument is like. Torturous, on the other hand, is a harsh judgment-"It was torture!"

6. EFFECT/AFFECT

When you want to talk about the influence of one thing on another, effect is the noun and affect is the verb. Weather affects crop yields. Weather has an effect on crop yields. Basically, if you can put a the or an in front of it, use effect.

7. EXCEPT/ACCEPT

8. DISCREET/DISCRETE

Discreet means hush-hush or private. Discrete means separate, divided, or distinct. In discreet, the two Es are huddled together, telling secrets. In discrete, they are separated and distinguished from each other by the intervening t.

9. I.E./E.G.

10. CITE/SITE

People didn't have as much trouble with these two before websites came along and everyone started talking about sites a lot more than they used to. A site is a location or place. Cite, on the other hand, is a verb meaning to quote or reference something else. You can cite a website, but not the other way around. If you're using site as a verb, it's probably wrong.

11. DISINTERESTED/UNINTERESTED

People sometimes use disinterested when they really mean uninterested. To be uninterested is to be bored or indifferent to something; this is the sense most everyday matters call for. Disinterested means impartial or having no personal stake in the matter. You want a judge or referee to be disinterested, but not necessarily uninterested.

12. FLOUT/FLAUNT

Are you talking about showing off? Then you don't mean flout, you mean flaunt. To flout is to ignore the rules. You can think of flaunt as the longer showier one, with that extra letter it goes around flaunting. You can flout a law, agreement, or convention, but you can flaunt almost anything.

13. PHASE/FAZE

Phase is the more common word and usually the right choice, except in those situations where it means "to bother." If something doesn't bother you, it doesn't faze you. Faze is almost always used after a negative, so be on alert if there is an isn't/wasn't/doesn't nearby.

14. LOATH/LOATHE

Loath is reluctant or unwilling, while to loathe is to hate. You are loath to do the things you loathe, which makes it confusing, but you can keep them clear by noting whether the word has a "to be" verb on one side and a to on the other (he is loath to, I would be loath to), in which case loath is correct, or it can be substituted by hate (I loathe mosquitoes), in which case you need the e on the end.

15. WAVE/WAIVE

16. INTENSIVE PURPOSES

Intensive is a word that means strong or extreme, but that's not what's called for in this phrase. To say "practically speaking" or "in all important ways" the phrase you want is "for all intents and purposes."

17. GAUNTLET/GAMUT

Run the gauntlet and run the gamut are both correct, but mean different things. Running the gauntlet was an old type of punishment where a person was struck and beaten while running between two rows of people. A gamut is a range or spectrum. When something runs the gamut, it covers the whole range of possibilities.

18. PEEK/PEAK

19. FORTUITOUS

Fortuitous means by chance or accident. Because of its similarity to fortunate, it is commonly used to refer to a lucky accident, but it need not be. Having lightning strike your house and burn it down is not a lucky event, but according to your insurance company it will be covered because it is fortuitous, or unforeseen.

20. REFUTE

To refute a claim or an argument doesn't just mean to offer counterclaims and opposing arguments. That would be to respond or rebut. To refute is to prove that a claim is false. If you refute, the disagreement should be over because you've won. If someone accuses you of not having paid for something, you refute the accusation by producing the receipt.

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20 Word Usage Mistakes Even Smart People Make

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Test your knowledge with amazing and interesting facts, trivia, quizzes, and brain teaser games on MentalFloss.com.

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20 of the funniest Polish phrases (and how to use them)

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A Polish person doesn't daydream. They "think of blue almonds" (myśleć o niebieskich migdałach)!

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11 phrases only Polish people understand

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Is your Polish friend walking on eyelashes (chodzić na rzęsach)? Nope, they're not crazy. They're just super tired...or very drunk!

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These common words were all created by idiots who misheard them and screwed them up. 

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These common words were all created by idiots who misheard them and screwed them up. 

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Some times a mishearing leads to the birth of a word. Here are some words we invented by getting them wrong. Produced for Mental Floss.