Centuries ago, monks who took a vow of silence developed their own hand signs, with hundreds of gestures, that are still in use today. Plus, how do speakers of different languages distinguish similar shades and tints of colors such as red, yellow...
In anatomical nomenclature, a bursa is a fluid-filled sac that helps cushion a joint. Bursa is the Latin word for “purse,” the source of English purse itself, as well as the bursar who controls the purse strings in a college, plus...
The verb greissel, also spelled greisle, means to “disgust,” “sicken” or “irritate,” as in That greissels me or I stayed greisseled about that for a long time. Greissel comes from a family of German words that...
The asthenosphere, as described in Brian Kevin’s Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Parks guide (Bookshop|Amazon) is a gurgling sea of plasticized rock beneath the earth’s rocky crust. Asthenosphere derives from Greek asthenes...
Many English words have their roots in Greek and Roman myth. Tantalize derives from the story of King Tantalus, condemned to stand forever in a pool that receded whenever he was thirsty, and beneath a bough of fruit that pulled away whenever he...
The word radish derives from Latin radix, meaning “root.” The Latin word is at the root of the English words radical and eradicate. This is part of a complete episode.