A father and son are having an ongoing discussion about which came first — the color orange or the name of the fruit? The citrus got there first. The original name of this fruit comes from Sanskrit naranga, or “orange tree.” A German...
Mike calls from Bloomsberg, Pennsylvania to ask about the word picayune, meaning “petty.” Why would a New Orleans newspaper call itself The Times-Picayune? The adjective picayune, meaning “trifling” or “insignificant,” derives from French picaillon...
Nancy in Dallas, Texas, shares a funny story about a preschooler’s misunderstanding of the expression in the meantime, meaning “in the interim.” The mean in meantime derives from a Latin medius, “in the middle,” the...
If an operator operates, why doesn’t a surgeon surge? The word surgeon comes from ancient Greek cheir, which means “hand,” and ergon, “work,” surgery being a kind of medical treatment done by hand, rather than the work...
Marianne in Grants Pass, Oregon, first heard skookum after moving from Texas to Sitka, Alaska. The adjective, now chiefly heard in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, comes from Chinook Jargon, a contact language drawing on Chinook, Nootka, English...
The French word for “now,” maintenant, goes back to Latin manu tenendo, which literally refers to the idea of holding something in one’s hand. Over time, that expression also came to mean something that is “at hand” or...