In anatomical nomenclature, a bursa is a fluid-filled sac that helps cushion a joint. Bursa is the Latin word for “purse,” the source of English purse itself, as well as the bursar who controls the purse strings in a college, plus...
Rhonda in San Diego, California, and her husband have a dispute over the proper nomenclature for flies that occasionally wing their way into their home. He wants to call a large fly a horsefly, but she has a biology and animal-husbandry background...
If you go to a department store, you’ll see the Men’s department, the Women’s department, and the Children’s department. So why do so many stores have a department that’s called simply “Baby”? Grant...
A Minnesotan who relocated to Wisconsin gets called a mud duck, and wants to know why. Much in the way Wisconsinites get referred to as cheese heads, it’s really a harmless bit of nomenclature from a cross-state rivalry. In hunting, the term...
sickler n.— «On a matter of semantics, the use of nomenclature derived from the names of diseases, such as “diabetics,” “epileptics” and, in this case, “sicklers,” may be viewed as pejorative and...
woodpecker n.— «I worked in the music business in the late “90s, and it would always rankle me to hear industry wonks refer to albums as “product” or “units.” I never used those words; I worked for a record...