Do you sound out the words on the page, or see each word as a whole?

Q. Are you a speed-reader, or a phonological dawdler over a printed page? A. We are all speed readers, recognizing whole words on sight rather than sounding them out letter by letter as children do when learning to read, says Roni Jacobson in “Scientific American” magazine. According to a new study in “Neuroimage,” eventually our brains compile a “visual dictionary” to keep words near the area that recognizes faces.

When San Diego State’s Laurie Glezer and colleagues studied 27 native, monolingual English speakers reading homophones like “hare” and “hair,” they noticed that the words activated separate visual “entries” in the brain. “The same group of neurons would have lit up if the brain was sounding the homophones out.” Both visual and phonological aspects are critical for reading.

There’s the notion that when learning to read, phonics is the way to go. This study refutes that idea: Skilled readers build up a visual vocabulary wherein they see a familiar word as a whole. However, those with reading disorders may have trouble developing or accessing the brain’s visual dictionary. More study is planned with “subjects who are dyslexic and others who are deaf — individuals who also tend to have trouble learning to read.” Q. They’re an evolutionary success story for sure, with this order comprising about one-fifth of all living mammals. The order is Chiroptera, for “hand-wings,” and they’re found on every continent but Antarctica. What are these shadowy creatures commonly called? A. They’re bats, and while they’ve been symbols of good luck in China, most of the world has associated them with night and darkness and danger, says Gemma Tarlach in “Discover” magazine. Neither birds nor rodents, bats have been capable of powered flight for 50 million years or more, but “unlike the more rigid wings of birds and insects, bat wings have multiple joints and move in and out as well as up, down, back and forth with every stroke.” Like birds, though, the outer layer of their skin contains a compound that enhances pliability. “No other mammal has this adaptation.” Also, a recent study “found that when competing for food, Mexican free-tailed bats emit an ultrasonic signal that effectively blocks the sound waves another bat sends out to home in on an insect,” causing the rival to miss its target.

Finally for a few myths that need debunking: Bats do not get tangled in long hair; the notion is said to trace back to an early Christian edict that women must cover their heads because their hair attracted demons, and bats as “devilish” creatures “were assumed to also have a thing for hair.” Second, most bats are not vampire-like: “Only three of the more than 1200 bat species are sanguivorous. Any bat you meet is far more likely to eat a mosquito or pollinate fruit than go for your jugular.” Q. Have you had enuf of spelling changes in the English language—“enuf ” for “enough,” “donut” for “doughnut”? If not, chew on a few more and try to name their origins: “ornery,” “passel,” “raiment,” “sassy” and “tarnal.” A. Surprisingly, “ornery” is an alteration of “ordinary” or “commonplace,” but over time it has taken on a more negative definition of “cantankerous,” “irritable,” “stubborn,” writes Anu Garg on his A.Word.A.Day website. “Passel,” stemming from “parcel,” suggests a large group or a large number, as in “a whole passel of pups.” “Raiment,” or clothing, derives from “arrayment,”; note its use by writer Tom Wolfe in “Esquire,” 2016: “I wear this raiment while working at my desk.”

“Sassy” has its origin in “sauce,” from Latin “salsa,” from “sallere,” to salt. Before pop jazz-singer Sarah Vaughan was “the Divine One,” she was called “sassy” Sarah, meaning “bold,” “feisty,” “impudent.” Finally, “tarnal” is an alteration of “eternal” (as in “eternal damnation”) and in fact means “damned.”