Kara in Charlotte, North Carolina, was shopping in New Brunswick, Canada, hoping to find a warm hat. She asked for a toboggan, but the store clerk was incredulous. Depending on where you’re from toboggan can mean either “a long, knitted hat” or “a long, flat-bottomed sled.” The English word toboggan comes from similar words for this type of sled in the Algonquian family of languages, first adopted by speakers of Canadian French, then passed on into English. The term toboggan hat or toboggan cap referred to the type of headwear one might wear while riding such a sled, possibly because of a resemblance between the curved shape of the hat and the curved front of the sled. 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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