Caroline in Charlotte, North Carolina, recalls her grandparents often used vittles to mean “food.” The word vittles derives from Latin victualis, meaning “nourishment” or “sustenance,” an etymological relative of...
If you vouch for something, you guarantee that what you’re saying is true. In the early 14th century, vouch was a transitive verb that meant “to summon into court to prove a title.” Vouch was adapted into English from an Old French...
There are lots of words for people who engage in gossip. Another is quidnunc, from the Latin words quid, “what,” and nunc, “now.” A quidnunc is always asking “What now?” This is part of a complete episode...
A middle-schooler in Waukesha, Wisconsin, wonders why the word island contains the letter S, and why is it pronounced with a long I and no S sound? In Old English, this word for dry land surrounded by water was igland, coming from words that mean...
In the acclaimed podcast S-town, journalist Brian Reed notes that sundials often bear haunting inscriptions about the brevity of life and the passage of time. Some 1,682 of them are collected in The Book of Sun-Dials, originally published in 1872 by...
Samantha, a Latin teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio, is curious about why some people say bread and butter after two people walking together pass by on either side of an object in their path or try to avoid being split. (An example occurs in a 1960...