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...
A seventh-grader from Colorado wonders where the word freckle comes from. This word’s origin is a bit murky but appears to be related to old Scandinavian term rooted in the idea of “scattering,” like the seeds that freckles...
Lots of foods are named for what happens to them. Mozzarella comes from an Italian word that means “cut,” feta cheese takes its name from a Greek word meaning the same thing, and schnitzel derives from a German word that also means...
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...
Giving your baby an unusual moniker may seem like a great idea at the time. But what if you have second thoughts? One mother of a newborn had such bad namer’s remorse, she poured out her heart to strangers online. Speaking of mothers and...
Sitzfleisch, from German words that literally mean “sit-flesh,” refers to perseverance–the ability, in other words, to sit and endure something for a long period of time. This is part of a complete episode.