Dallas Morning News restaurant critic Leslie Brenner has written about the popular fish dish called poke, which takes its name from a Hawaiian word that means “to cut crosswise.” Many other foods take their names for the way...
Hundreds of years ago, the word girl didn’t necessarily mean a female child — in the 14th and 15th centuries, it could refer to a child of either sex. Only later did its meaning become more specific. • Some people think that referring to a...
A San Diego, California, guy says his high school history teacher used the phrase chop chop wiki wiki meaning “Hurry up!” The first part of this phrase comes from similar-sounding Cantonese words — the source also of the chop in...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a word game based on the preferences of Mookie the Cow, whose favorite things have names that feature moo sounds. That loose Hawaiian garment, for example. This is part of a complete episode.
Is there a word you keep having to look up in the dictionary, no matter how many times you’ve looked it up before? Maybe it’s time for a mnemonic device. And: a listener shares a letter from Kurt Vonnegut himself, with some reassuring...
Did you ever wonder why we capitalize the pronoun “I,” but not any other pronoun? Also, the romantic story behind the term halcyon days, the origin of the phrase “like white on rice,” and the linguistic scuttlebutt on the...