The Economist's informal R-word index tracks the number of newspaper articles that use the word "recession" in a quarter.

U.S. Air Force research shows your brain can recognize a word in less than five-hundredths of a second, while it takes a quarter of a second—five times longer—to say it in your head.

"Under the earth, in the flat, dark air, the wet, gloomy rock gave quarter grudgingly" Jimmy Breslin. The word can also denote deepness of shade or color .