Holly from Camden, South Carolina, says her grandmother used to sprinkle lots of pepper on their food, advising the family that heavily seasoning food that way meant that they wouldn’t get the pips. The term the pips or the pip was originally a term applied to a disease suffered by poultry, and over time its meaning became more generalized to mean a wide variety of unspecified ailments. This is part of a complete episode.
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
If someone’s got melon, it means they’re smart. The expression most likely arose because of the resemblance between a melon and a human head. Several other foods are associated with having brains, including a cabbage, a gourd, and even a...
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