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...
Mehran of San Antonio, who grew up in Iran, notes that in Farsi, khaki means earthy or down-to-earth. English got the word through British military use in South Asia. By the 1840s, soldiers in northern India or what is now Pakistan were wearing a...
A caller wonders if the Spanish and Arabic articles el and al spring from the same linguistic root. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Spanish and Arabic Article Roots” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, how are you...
Grant shares a strange word from the fringes of English: mofussil. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Mofussil” Earlier, we were talking about words that caught us up short the first time we ran across them. Here’s...
goonda tax n. money extorted as ‘protection’ or to permit passage on public thoroughfares, or paid as a simple bribe. Etymological Note: The Hindi and Urdu term goonda can be translated as rascal or ruffian and even as goon, but there is no evidence...
chamcha n. a sycophant, toady, or hanger-on. Etymological Note: From the Hindi and Urdu word for ‘spoon.’ (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)