What’s the best way for someone busy to learn lots of new words quickly for a test like the GRE? Looking up their origins can help. Or, record yourself reading the words and definitions and play them back while you’re doing other chores...
Brand names, children’s games, and the etiquette of phone conversations. Those clever plastic PEZ dispensers come in all shapes and sizes—but where did the word PEZ come from? The popular candy’s name is the product of wordplay involving...
A caller with a 25-year-old parrot wonders: How much language do birds really understand? Plus, Knock-knock. Who’s there? Boo. Well… you can guess the rest. But there was a time when these goofy jokes were a brand-new craze sweeping the nation...
Mallory, a seventh-grader in Colorado with lots of freckles in a family that mostly doesn’t, asks about freckle. The word is recorded in English as far back as the 14th century, though its deeper origin is uncertain. It probably came through a...
Mozzarella, feta, and schnitzel all carry a relevant kitchen verb in their names. Mozzarella comes from an Italian word meaning “cut,” and feta from a Greek word with the same meaning. German schnitzel also derives from a word meaning “to cut,” the...
When an Austrian candy maker needed a name for his new line of mints, he took the first, middle, and last letters of the German word pfefferminz, or “peppermint,” to form the brand name PEZ. He later marketed the candies as an alternative for...