Mary from Greensboro, North Carolina, asks about an expression her Canadian mother used when Mary’s room looked particularly messy: A cow couldn’t find her calf in here! The more common A cow couldn’t find its calf in this room! was popularized by...
Among biologists, a frog’s croak is known as an advertisement call. It’s a male frog’s way of making himself known. A Wisconsin listener says children in her area learn that this sound is jugarum, jugarum. Poet and editor Willard Espy...
What’s the official state fish of Hawaii? It’s the humuhumunukunukuapuaʻa. The name translates as “little triggerfish with a small snout like a pig,” puaʻa being the Hawaiian word for “pig.” The triggerfish is named for the large spine on its back...
Cria means a baby llama or alpaca. The English word comes from Spanish cría, related to criar, “to rear” or “to raise” a young animal. The four-letter word may seem merely like a useful Scrabble play, but it’s also the everyday term for those long...
During the COVID-19 lockdown in the English countryside, writer Chloe Dalton stumbles upon a leveret no bigger than the width of her palm, lying motionless on a dirt road. Against her better judgment, she scoops it up. Most leverets in captivity die...
Jimmy from Shenandoah County, Virginia, says whenever a moth flew into the room, his mother would yell “Cattle bat!” This term is almost certainly a variation of candle bat, a folk term for moths found in various English dialects. In Caribbean...
