Jim in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, says that during childhood games of touch football, he and his friends would count out the required three seconds before rushing as Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Mississippi three. Other ways of counting...
Why don’t we refer to prunes as dried plums? Prune and plum come from the same distant etymological roots and traveled into English via French and German respectively. The French still use prune for “plum.” Other foods that undergo...
On our Facebook group, listeners are discussing anadromes, words that form another word when spelled in reverse. Some people choose anadromes for names as well, such as Ande (a name adopted by someone originally called Edna), Noel (a girl named for...
As a noun, respair means “the return of hope after a period of despair.” As a verb, respair means “to have hope again.” Although both forms are rare and obsolete, they seem ripe for reviving. Respair is among dozens of...
The Cabinet of Calm: Soothing Words for Troubled Times (Bookshop|Amazon) includes the term worldcraft, meaning “the unique skills, wisdom and experience that an older person has amassed in their lifetime.” This is part of a complete...
Nancy from Ithaca, New York, says her daughter read widely at a very young age, which meant she encountered the terms son of a gun and record long before she knew how to pronounce them correctly, which made for some amusing stories. This is part of...