What’s up with ketchup? The shifting history and spelling of the name of this condiment. For centuries, ketchup was a fishy sauce originating in Asia—the tomatoes came only later! Plus, a new book shows what’s lost when a language dies: when there...
Lisa from Tabernacle, New Jersey, grew up using the term cabbage night to refer to the night before Halloween when all manner of mischief takes place. The term itself goes back to the 1860s, while the custom of pranks on October 30 is older. The...
Kate in Omaha, Nebraska, wonders about the expression Doctor of Humane Letters, an honorary degree conferred by Creighton University. The words humane and letters in this case mean something slightly different from their modern meanings. The older...
Amid a 1796 heat wave, Jane Austen wrote to her sister, “What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Jane Austen’s Continual State of Inelegance in a...
La verdad de la milanesa, literally “the truth of the milanesa,” is an Argentine Spanish expression meaning “the real truth.” One possible origin involves a dispute over whether the breaded meat dish milanesa comes from Italy or Austria. Another...
In How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance, and the Race to Save Our Words (Bookshop|Amazon), British journalist Sophia Smith-Galer writes about linguicide, the erasure or suppression of a language. This loss may be brutally overt—the result of...