You can learn something new every day - literally - from wordsmith.org's Word of the Day. I'm signed up to three of these services (the others are dictionary.com's and Merriam-Webster's, if you're interested), but Wordsmith's is usually the most informative and interesting (and it's been running since March 1994, so its archives are huge).

Take today's word, for example - I knew the word decimate, but I had no idea before today that it derives from the Ancient Roman practice of killing every tenth soldier in a mutinous legion.

I'm signed up to get these things through email every day, because I'm just fascinated by the English language. How can anybody not enjoy the fact that sesquipedalian means 'given to the overuse of long words'?