Who is Boo-Boo the Fool? A listener wonders if this African-American character has any relation the Puerto Rican fool, Juan Bobo. Martha draws a connection to the Spanish term bobo, meaning “fool,” and its Latin root balbus, meaning “stammerer.” The...
What do you call an expert speller? A “Words With Friends” enthusiast wants to know. Martha tells her that a great speller is called an orthographer or orthographist, from the Latin roots ortho- meaning “straight” or...
Evan from Dallas, Texas, asks whether decimate should only mean destroying one-tenth of something or whether it can mean generally destroying it. The word goes back to a Roman military punishment in which one in ten mutinous soldiers was killed, but...
You seem to hear it on all the television hospital dramas: “stat!” A physician says she knows it means “immediately,” but she doesn’t know its origins. Quick! Is there a Latin expert in the house? This is part of a...
A San Diego woman who’s homeschooling her children wonders if there’s a formula that explains why nouns like teacher and writer end in “er,” while others, like professor and conductor, end in “or.” She suspects it...
