Among London cabbies, a musher is somebody who owns their own cab, a starving musher is someone still paying for their cab, and musher’s lotion is rain. The book Schott’s Significa: A Miscellany of Secret Languages (Bookshop|Amazon), writer Ben...
A retronym is a word coined to distinguish something new from an older, more generic version, such as electric guitar or clock radio. A couple of new retronyms are fine water, or “unprocessed water that reflects a region’s terroir” and water...
Creative communication in a noisy world! Writing a clever 140-character tweet isn’t easy. But you know what’s even more impressive? Working all 26 letters of the alphabet into just one sentence! The term for that type of sentence is pangram...
A wine expert with a bachelor’s degree in linguistics and a minor in French wonders about the origin of the term sommelier. It shares a root with sumpter, meaning “pack animal.” Sommelier used to refer generally to the person in charge of the...
tea sommelier
n.— «To assist customers in selecting the appropriate teas to drink with each course there is a “tea sommelier” on hand.» —“Off the Menu” by Florence Fabricant New York Times June 29, 1994. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
tea sommelier n.— «Tiny finger sandwiches, crumpets, Devonshire cream and delicate tea cups hard figure on my gastronomic landscape. And this place even has a Tea Sommelier (a highfalutin word for tea expert) for heavens sake!» —“Tea, Tarot, and...