On our Facebook group, listeners play a game imagining what kind of plants might grow in a garden tended by various types of people. For example, a veterinarian might plant dogwood and catnip, and an ophthalmologist could plant irises. What might a...
What does it mean to vet a political candidate? The word “vet” comes from veterinarian, specifically the ones who would examine a horse before a race to make sure it was healthy and eligible. Similarly, one might vet a candidate to make...
Steva, a small-animal veterinarian in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, has learned that a doppick dog is clumsy or uncoordinated. The word is a borrowing from Pennsylvania German, ultimately from the German Doppich, meaning clumsy or awkward. A nixie cat...
Phil in Indianapolis asks about the verb vet, now common in political talk. It comes from veterinarian. The term was in horse racing by the mid-1800s, when a vet checked horses before a race to make sure they were sound and hadn’t been tampered with...
BARF n.— «Some owners take that to mean bones and raw food, better known as the B.A.R.F. diet. But vets who approve are difficult to find—especially if they’ve saved dogs from intestinal obstruction, perforation and peritonitis caused by...
furkid n.— «Best of all, there’s a nice seven-page subset out of the “People I Detest” chapter devoted to people with “furkids” or, to use her other neologism, “furparents.” These people don’t have pets...
