The German antiwitz, or anti-joke, sidesteps the machinery of an ordinary punchline. In one goofy specimen, two muffins are sitting in an oven. When one complains, “Man, it’s hot in here,” the other blurts, “Oh, my God, a talking muffin!” This is...
The Italian word ponte means “bridge,” as in the Ponte Vecchio of Florence. In Italian, ponte now also denotes the Monday or Friday added to make for a long weekend. Other languages, such as German and Spanish, also make a similar use of their words...
A man in Chalk Mountain, Texas, recalls a sublime evening of conversation with a new German friend. As they parted, the woman uttered a German phrase suggesting that she wanted the moment to last forever. It’s “Verweile doch! Du bist so...
Sunny-side up eggs sometime go by the name looking at you eggs, an apparent reference to how the yolk in the middle of the egg white makes them resemble eyes. A similar idea appears in the German name, which translates as “mirror egg,”...
Mallory, a seventh-grader in Colorado with lots of freckles in a family that mostly doesn’t, asks about freckle. The word is recorded in English as far back as the 14th century, though its deeper origin is uncertain. It probably came through a...
The stories behind the brand names of automobiles is sometimes surprising. The name of the Audi derives from a bilingual pun involving a German word, and Mazda honors the central deity of Zoroastrianism, with which the car company’s founder...