A listener in Richardson, Texas, notes that before her mother married, her middle name was Knight and her last name was Chevallier. For those who know the French word for “knight,” chevalier, this made for some occasional chuckles. This...
During a trip to a renaissance faire, Quiz Guy John Chaneski noticed a fellow festooned with cuts of meat. Who might yon noble knight be, if not Sir Loin of Beef? That experience inspired John’s latest puzzle about others dubbed Sir this or...
Jennifer, a seventh-grade English teacher in Kingsport, Tennessee, and her students have been studying the development of Romance languages, which got them wondering: When did the words romance and romantic come to be associated with stories about...
A Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, woman serves on a committee that is choosing a new school. Some members propose calling their sports teams the Steel Knights. But is the term knight gender-neutral? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Hundreds of years ago, the word girl could refer to a child of either gender, and the word boy applied specifically to a servant. The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary is a useful resource for understanding which terms were in...
Dubbing someone a knight by tapping their shoulder with a sword is a venerable tradition, but that didn’t stop a wag from mocking it in limerick form with a groaner of a pun. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Knighting...