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...
How does social context shape our perception of language? When hiking the Appalachian Trail, a young woman from Wyoming found that fellow hikers assumed she was from another country, not only because of how she spoke, but also how she looked...
Jill in Shelton, Washington, says that when she lived in Southern California, she understood the word garbage to mean food scraps, with trash referring to everything else collected curbside. Historically, garbage has referred to the wet, disgusting...
A Minnesota listener wonders about a phrase her father always used: the juice was worth the squeeze, meaning the result was worth the effort. It’s simply a reference to squeezing a piece of fruit for drinking. The musician Lizzo suggests a...
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...
How would you like to be welcomed to married life by friends and neighbors descending on your home for a noisy celebration, tearing off the labels of all your canned foods and scattering cornflakes in your bed? That tradition has almost died out...