Kinbank is a new database that illustrates the global diversity of family terms. English, for example, specifies sibling relationships with just one of two terms: sister or brother. But most other languages have even more specific terms. In...
Someone who is easily offended can be said to be pepper-nosed. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Prickly Pepper-Nosed People” Here’s a very handy word that was used in the 16th and 17th centuries, but seems to have died out. It’s...
Will remembers coming home from kindergarten sure his class had gone to a pepper alley, though the school event was almost certainly a pep rally. Oddly enough, pepper alley is a real old slang expression: in 19th-century boxing, to be in pepper...
Holly from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, remembers her grandmother loading family dinners with pepper and saying they wouldn’t get the pip. The pepper appears to be a folk-remedy flourish, not part of the word’s origin. The pip, also the pips, has...
The phrase salt of the earth describes someone who is essential and pure of heart, a reference to the biblical Sermon on the Mount. To salt the earth usually means to render the ground useless, whether metaphorically or literally. This is part of a...
Carrie from Waupaca, Wisconsin, confesses she was stumped when that her son Aidan asked,”Mom, can you do a winter pepper?” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Winter Pepper” You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about...