How do you transform ancient Chinese script for use in the modern age? English uses a keyboard with just 26 letters, but the first Chinese typewriter looked like a small table under a huge disk with more than 4,000 characters. A new book chronicles...
What’s up with ketchup? The shifting history and spelling of the name of this condiment. For centuries, ketchup was a fishy sauce originating in Asia—the tomatoes came only later! Plus, a new book shows what’s lost when a language dies: when there...
Brian from Lafayette, Indiana, wonders why chicken is abbreviated CHX in the restaurant industry. Using X as a substitute or shortener has a long history. Medieval scribes sometimes drew a line through the final stroke of an abbreviated word. This...
Brittany from Indianapolis asks about the pale in pales in comparison, especially whether it refers to color, brightness, or something outshining something else. The expression uses pale in the sense of becoming faint, less bright, or diminished, a...
Do you refer to your dog or cat as “somebody”? As in: When you love somebody that much, you don’t mind if they slobber. In other words, is your pet a somebody or a something? Also, for centuries, there was little consistency in the way many English...
In this bonus A Way with Words minicast, Martha and Grant look into the myriad stories behind the word cocktail. Does the drink name come from feathers? Horses? Something up a horse’s rump? It’s a weird wandering down etymology lane… This minicast...