When you had sleepovers as a child, what did you call the makeshift beds you made on the floor? In some places, you call those bedclothes and blankets a pallet. This word comes from an old term for “straw.” And: What’s the story...
Jejune, meaning insipid or superficial, comes from Latin jejunus, meaning empty. The same root gives us jejunum, the part of the small intestine that is usually empty when autopsied. The same idea of emptiness is reflected in the related French and...
Antejentacular derives from Latin words that mean before breakfast. One might take, for example, an antejentacular walk before sitting down for the morning’s meal. Antejentacular comes from the Latin jejunus meaning fasting or barren...