A flashlight doesn’t flash. It provides a steady beam of light. So why is it called a flashlight? The earliest versions lit up only briefly before the batteries gave out and required a recharge, so they were literally “flash lights.” Years later, in 1916, Eveready flashlight company held a nationwide contest to coin a new word for the new, improved version. The winning entry?Daylo. Obviously, daylo didn’t catch on. The old word, flashlight, stuck around in the United States, while in the United Kingdom, this illumination aid was called an electric torch or later, simply a torch.This is part of a complete episode.
After our conversation about towns with extremely short names, many listeners wrote to tell us about Why, Arizona. Others pointed out that there are towns called Ely in Iowa, Minnesota, and Nevada. Other super-short appellations include Rye, New...
Debbie from Crawfordsville, Florida, says that when she and her husband reach an impasse while working on something, they’ll say Let’s grok about it, which they use to mean “Let’s think about it.” Grok was coined by...
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