In the great tradition of Johnny Carson’s “How cold was it?” shtick: Just how preposterous was that folk etymology? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “How Preposterous Was It?” Grant, I have one more how cold was it. Okay. Yeah. Okay...
You might be surprised to learn that a “hoosier” isn’t necessarily from Indiana. Around the St. Louis, Missouri, area, the term hoosier has a whole other meaning. And: Scotland is the home of the Golden Spurtle world championship, but what exactly...
Science journalist Laura Spinney’s new book Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global (Bookshop|Amazon) shows how lots of languages as diverse as Hindi, Italian, and English all stem from a single prehistoric ancestral tongue. A basic word for the...
The now-extinct Tocharian languages were spoken in western China in the latter half of the first millennium CE. We have only fragments of written texts in these languages, but here’s part of a Tocharian love poem that conveys emotions that echo...
An Ohio listener reports that when her toddler daughter used to ask for what she called LMNOPs. It took a while for their family to realize she wanted M&M’s candy. She also had her own word go-dogs for “hot dogs,” and her family still fondly uses...
Why don’t we refer to prunes as dried plums? Prune and plum come from the same distant etymological roots and traveled into English via French and German respectively. The French still use prune for “plum.” Other foods that undergo a name change...
