If you’ve never dined on funistrada, braised trake, or buttered ermal, you’re not missing out, nor are you alone. All of those are made-up food names that were part of a 1972 survey given to thousands of members of the U.S. military to determine their food preferences. These three names were part of a list of 378 real food names; the fake were just in there to test whether the servicemembers were paying attention. Most responded that they’d never heard of those three, but a few said they had, and in fact ranked funistrada preferable to lima beans. The names sound somewhat plausible, though, which recalls studies of the bouba-kiki effect, which refers to the way people tend to associate certain sounds with certain ideas. In the case of the bouba-kiki effect, they associated the nonsense word bouba with round, curvy shapes and the nonsense word kiki with more pointed, spiky shapes. 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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