Vanita from Dallas grew up in India calling the table container for salt and pepper a salt-and-pepper cellar, where many Americans would say salt-and-pepper shaker. A saltcellar (yes, usually spelled as one word with no space) is a vessel for salt...
Cobwebs are spiderwebs, especially the dusty, abandoned kind that need sweeping away. Middle English coppe or cop meant “spider” or “round thing,” and cob survives mostly in this compound. A related old word, attercop, combines a word for “poison”...
Do Americans use the same sign language as the British? And what do Japanese people use instead of umm? Plus, why do we vote at polling places? What goes into file 13? All this, a word quiz, commode vs. toilet, saditty and bougie, and cute stuff...
Rare word fans: uhtceare, from Old English words that mean “dawn” and “care,” is a fancy term for those worries you fret over in the wee hours. Next time you find yourself lying awake at night worrying, try reading the...
Hugh in Newton, Massachusetts, noticed two very different senses of quarry, represented in John Singer Sargent’s painted stone quarries and Gustave Courbet’s The Quarry, with its fallen stag. They’re different words. The excavation sense goes back...
Why do we vote at a polling place? Pol in Middle English simply meant head, and polls are the place where heads are counted. The Middle English word for head also gives us get polliwog, a young frog with a wiggly head, and tadpole, those toads and...
