Animals leave their footprints in several English words, including chatoyant, or “shimmering like a cat’s eyes” and sleuth, which is short for sleuth-hound, a kind of bloodhound used for sniffing out prey. Pets have also inspired lots of playful terms. For example, when a cat leaves its tongue out, that’s a blep. A blop is a “little blep.” A boop is “a gentle tap on a critter’s nose,” or snoot, so if a friendly pup is nearby, you can reach out and boop a snoot. Mlem is a cats’ gentle licking of its whiskers. Other such terms include doggos and puppers and pupperinos. A sploot is when a dog or cat or squirrel lies on its tummy with limbs outstretched. 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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