Shuba in Sammamish, Washington, grew up in India, where she heard speakers of Indian English refer to an eggplant as a brinjal. She assumed that this was a British English term, but later realized that in Britain, this vegetable is called an...
If someone urges you to spill the tea, they probably don’t want you tipping over a hot beverage. Originally, the tea here was the letter T, as in “truth.” To spill the T means to “pass along truthful information.” Plus...
To fossick meaning “to rummage about,” derives from the use of fossicking for the practice of literally digging about for gemstones in abandoned mining excavations, a hobby that’s particularly popular in Australia and New Zealand...
A mental health therapist wonders about the origin of the term manic. It derives from Greek mania, meaning “madness” or “frenzy,” from an older root that gives us mind and mental. From the same root comes maniac. The word...
Surf’s up! When surfers describe the waves as going gangbusters, it’s a great time out on the water. But why that word? Plus, a thesaurus of flavors serves up delicious writing about the taste of foods and spices. And speaking of...
Kendall from Boone, North Carolina, says that particularly after Kendall had a challenging day, her mother would gently ask How’s your copperosity? meaning “How are you doing?” Copperosity is a playful variation of corporosity...