Someone should write a love letter to a new book called Letters of Note. It’s a splendid collection of all kinds of correspondence through the ages: Elvis Presley fans writing to the president, children making suggestions to famous...
A hawk in its prime state of fitness is known as a yarak, a word that may derive from a Persian word meaning “strength, ability.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Yarak” Grant, here’s a word I...
Is it time to replace the expression “the mentally ill”? Some argue the term unfairly stigmatizes a broad range of people. Also, the winter sport of… skitching, which involves snowy roads, leather shoes — and car bumpers...
Sue in Wilder, Vermont, asks about the big cheese, a family title for her father since a pre-wedding barbecue in 1977. The phrase probably has little to do with dairy. One likely strand is Urdu and Persian chiz, meaning “thing,” which British...
In Afghanistan, proverbs and poetry are part of everyday conversation. When Martha spoke with Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and And the Mountains Echoed, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, he told her about graffiti in...
What came first, the color orange or the fruit? The original term is Sanskrit and refers to the fruit. As the fruit traveled west, the word came with it. Grant notes that, like the terms for parts of the body, the names of colors travel very well in...