Brand names, children’s games, and the etiquette of phone conversations. Those clever plastic PEZ dispensers come in all shapes and sizes—but where did the word PEZ come from? The popular candy’s name is the product of wordplay involving...
A professional shoemaker in Columbiana, Ohio, wonders why the words cobbler and cobble have negative connotations, given that shoemaking is a highly skilled trade. The notion of cobbling something together in a haphazard or half-hearted way goes...
Drupe means a fleshy fruit built around a hard pit, such as a peach or cherry. A drupelet is one of the tiny seeded units that cluster into fruits like raspberries and blackberries. Those bead-like drupelets reminded professional namers of a...
When does a word’s past make it too sensitive to use in the present? In contra dancing, there’s a particular move that dancers traditionally call a gypsy. But there’s a growing recognition that many people find the term gypsy...
Those little musical interludes on radio programs, particularly public radio shows, go by lots of names, including stinger, button, bumper, and bridge. By the way, the fellow who chooses and inserts them in our show is our engineer and technical...
We spoke on the show not long ago about yuppies and dinks, but neglected to mention silks: households with a single income and lots of kids. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Yuppies, Dinks, and Silks” We were talking on...