The lovely English word stilliform, or “drop-shaped,” comes from Latin stilla, meaning “drop,” the source also of distill and instill. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Stilliform Means Drop-Shaped” I think one of the most beautiful...
Wayne in Sherman, Texas, wonders how the term pear-shaped came to describe something that’s gone badly. The expression seems to have arisen during Falklands War of the early 1980s. If you need a word for pear-shaped, there’s always pyriform, from...
You might use the phrase pear-shaped to describe someone who’s wide in the hips, but to say everything went pear-shaped can also mean that things went wrong. This slang term was among the members of Britain’s Royal Air Force during the Falkland...
