Tuque, a primarily Canadian name for a warm knit hat, is related to the French word toque, the tall white hat that chefs wear. Take our Great Knitted Hat Survey and tell us what you call them. This is part of a complete episode.
Gibberish and its variants aren’t just for goofy teens in the wayback of the station wagon. As Jessica Weiss notes in Schwa Fire, the online magazine about language, people all over the world speak various forms of it. Her article features...
Why tell someone they’re sexy when you can let them know they’re good as corn? That’s what the Portuguese say, along with “taking his little horse away from the rain,” an idiom that means giving up. This is part of a...
Hector’s pup, or since Hector was a pup, is another way to say, “Oh, heck.” The expressions go back to the early 1900’s, when people were perhaps more familiar with the character of Hector from The Iliad. This is part of a...
Ineluctable, meaning inescapable, is one of those words Martha has to look up in the dictionary every time she sees it. But noting its Latin origin, luctari, meaning “to struggle,” and therefore related to reluctant, will help. This is...
When getting closer to an objective, do you hone in, home in, zone in, or zero in? The phrase zero in goes back to World War II and the act of fixing on a target. Home in carries a sense of traveling to or being aimed at something, but people...