Dallas Morning News restaurant critic Leslie Brenner has written about the popular fish dish called poke, which takes its name from a Hawaiian word that means “to cut crosswise.” Many other foods take their names for the way...
When it comes to learning new things, what’s on your bucket list? A retired book editor decided to try to learn Latin, and ended up learning a lot about herself. There’s a word for someone who learns something late in life. And when it...
This week on A Way with Words: Restaurant jargon, military slang, and modern Greek turns of phrase. • Some restaurants now advertise that they sell “clean” sandwiches. But that doesn’t mean they’re condiment-free or the...
The word clean, as in clean food, has taken on a whole new life as a buzzword describing food free of artificial ingredients, preservatives, or added color. A restaurant chain now boasts clean sandwiches, and the topic is now covered by the magazine...
A worker in Montgomery, Alabama, doctor’s office reports that when the office is extremely busy, she and her colleagues will say “We’re slammin‘” or “We’re slammed.” It’s a common expression in...
A restaurant review in the Myanmar Times describes a steak that “could not have been more middle-of-the-road if it was glued to a cat’s eye.” This analogy makes sense only if you know that “cat’s eye” is a term...