Damien from New York City, NY, is curious about the term his Hungarian grandmother used for the crust that forms at the corners of your eyes after a night’s sleep. The Hungarian word for eye boogers is csipa, pronounced “CHEE-pah.” Csipa means “gum” or “gooeyness,” and csipás szemek means “gummy eyes.” Other Hungarian words for “rheum” or “mucus” include takony, nyálka, and slejm. The word csipa may have been borrowed into Hungarian from a Turkic language. Turkish word çapak, pronounced “chah-PAHK,” which means the same thing. In German, Augenbutter or “eye butter,” is applied to that yellow crust, as is a word that translates as “sleep sand.” In French, it’s chassie, from a Latin word that means “poop.” The Portuguese synonym remela may derive from the word mel, meaning “honey,” cognate with Spanish miel. Older Scots terms include rack and garr. English equivalents include sleepy buds, dozy dust, sleepy men, sleepy winks, crusties, as well as gound and the medical term hardened periocular discharge. This is part of a complete episode.
According to Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English (Bookshop|Amazon) by Ben Yagoda, the word smarmy, meaning “unctuous” or “ingratiating,” may come from a 19th-century magazine contest, in which readers sent in...
Mary Beth in Greenville, South Carolina, wonders: Why do we say four-oh-nine for the number 409 instead of four-zero-nine or four-aught-nine? What are the rules for saying either zero or oh or aught or ought to indicate that arithmetical symbol...
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