A Wonderleaf question
Where do new words come from?
a real page from the book
New words come from people needing names for new things, new feelings, and new ways of living. We build them from older words, borrow them from other languages, copy sounds, and sometimes turn brands or jokes into everyday speech when enough people use them.
A word becomes real by being useful. If a child invents the perfect name for the sock lost under the bed, and the family keeps saying it, that tiny household word is already doing a word's job: carrying meaning from one person to another.
Wonder words
- language
- borrow
- invent
- dictionary
Try it out
At dinner, invent one word for a familiar family problem and use it three times before bedtime.
Read the whole picture book
Watercolour scenes, straight answers, about three minutes cover to cover.
Open the picture bookKeep wondering
One more wonder: Why is space so dark?
And the next question?
Ask anything — Wonderleaf writes and illustrates a picture book for it. That's the whole idea.
Ask your own questionThe next wonder, by email
A new question goes up every Sunday evening. We email it to you Monday morning, free to read that week.
One wonder a week, nothing else, ever. Unsubscribe in one click.