Leo, a scientIst in Tucson, Arizona, used to live in Japan, where he often heard Japanese speakers using English that wasn’t quite correct. For example, one Japanese friend described someone “full of worry” as scareful. Another...
Our conversation about the reminder that little pitchers have big ears prompted Cheryl to write from Chicago that she and her friends developed punny way to say the same thing. They just warn each other by saying “Corn!” This is part of...
Why tell someone they’re sexy when you can let them know they’re good as corn? That’s what the Portuguese say, along with “taking his little horse away from the rain,” an idiom that means giving up. This is part of a...
Carol in Hamden, Connecticut, grew up hearing her Tennessee stepfather use unthaw to mean thaw, then saw a cornbread recipe calling for frozen corn kernels, “unthawed.” The verb unthaw is a dialectal form found in parts of the United States...
leaky crop n.— «Corn is what scientists call a leaky crop. When it’s fertilized, it cannot absorb one hundred percent of the nutrients we give it.» —“Chesapeake Bay Funds Added To Farm Bill” by Alex DeMetrick WJZ...
three-sister planting n.— «Imitating a traditional Iroquois practice called “three-sister planting,” the farm plants corn, beans and squash together. The beans fix nitrogen into the soil that corn depletes while the corn’s stalk enables...