A Louisiana listener shares a favorite passage from Laurie Lee’s memoir Cider with Rosie (Bookshop|Amazon), about his boyhood in post-World-War II England. An extract is here and contains the passage:“For the first time in my life I was out of the...
Lachryphagy is literally “tear-eating,” and refers to the way some insects crawl up to the eyes of much larger animals to sip their protein-rich tears. The name of the wine Lachryma Christi means “tear of Christ,” and someone tearful is said to be...
A question from a listener on the A Way with Words Facebook page has Martha musing about the entomological and etymological connections between the word pupil and the pupal stage of an insect’s life.
In an earlier episode, the hosts discussed the phrase “all over it like a duck on a junebug,” which refers to doing something with great eagerness. Martha shares an email from a Wisconsin listener who’s watched plenty of ducks interact with junebugs...
