These infamously chipper singing groups are called glee because the melding of voices makes everyone happy, right? Actually, joy has little to do with it. Why are they really called glee clubs? Yes, one definition of glee is “open delight or pleasure,” e.g., The students ran out of the building on the last day of school with glee.Glee derives from the Old English glēo, meaning “mirth, jesting, …
Since 1872, the winner of golf’s British Open, which is also called The Open Championship and the oldest of the sport’s four major tournaments, has won a trophy that goes by an unusual name: the Claret Jug. What is the origin of a claret jug? The Claret Jug, officially called the Golf Champion Trophy, is made in the style of the jugs used in the nineteenth century …
It’s hard to believe, but this month marks 20 years of daily lexical morsels from Word of the Day. What started as a small audience of intrepid logophiles, who braved spotty dial-up connections for their quotidian word fix in 1999, has blossomed into a vibrant community of Word of the Day devotees, who bring context, conversation, inspiration, and personal connections to our selections every day. …
An Anatomy Of Cocktail Names Through History by John M. Cunningham The cocktail renaissance of the 21st century, in which craft-cocktail bars have proliferated and classic cocktails are back in fashion, has proved that there is a true art to inventing and mixing drinks. But, what about naming them? For some bartenders, bestowing a name upon one of their newly devised concoctions can be the …
What do Scotland, Silicon Valley, LGBTQ pride, and Jesus Christ all have in common? Unicorns. You read that right, unicorns. This connection may sound as fantastical as unicorns themselves, that mythical horse famed for the single horn it bears on its forehead. But, only a creature as unique as a unicorn could span such a wide array of contexts. So, too, can the word unicorn. Since …
It seems like a rite of passage for most kids: your first made-up language. Whether you devised it with a sibling or wrote in a diary only you could translate, there was an allure in concealing your communication in code. The appeal doesn’t dissipate as we grow older, either. Take Igpay Atinlay. Pig Latin, that is. Plenty of parents still use it to speak about things they don’t …
The word ban gets bandied about a lot these days, from vegan brides wanting to ban meat-eaters from their weddings to plastic straws getting banned from coffee drinks. On an individual level, banning things we don’t like or agree with can be an easy way to rid them from our life. But, zoom out to a governmental and societal level, and bans become much more complex. What …
What is a mondegreen? Have you ever heard someone sing the wrong lyrics to a song? Maybe a child gave the nursery rhyme “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” a new meaning by replacing the line “life is but a dream” with “life’s a butter dream.” Or maybe you’ve unironically belted out “Excuse me while I kiss this guy,” instead of Jimi Hendrix’s intended lyrics, “Excuse me …
Is root beer the world’s most oddly named carbonated beverage … we don’t know, that award might go to 7-up, but we’re going to explore the naming of this soft drink regardless. What, after all, is the root in root beer? The roots of root in root beer The ingredient in root beer that primarily gives the beverage its distinctive flavor is sassafras, which is “the root …
Words are funny things. For one thing, they are always changing. Consider lit, which, conventionally, refers to “lighting something up, e.g., a lit candle.” But, in slang, lit means something is “excellent.” It’s hot, it’s on fire—which are just more examples of how we play with words. For another, they keep secret stories of the past. Did you know daisy literally means “day’s eye,” named for the way …
Traditionally, the word ninja is defined as “a member of a feudal Japanese society of mercenary agents, highly trained in martial arts and stealth (ninjutsu), who were hired for covert purposes ranging from espionage to sabotage and assassination.” These ninjas have captured the Western pop culture imagination since at least the 1960s, when the word was borrowed into English. Since then, ninja has expanded to describe “a …
Chi Town, The Big Onion, The Windy City. Call it what you will, Chicago is home to a herd of sports teams that could fill a zoo—the Cubs, the Bears, and the Bulls (and, oh yeah, the White Sox too). Not to mention it’s the land of deep-dish pizza and Chicago-style hot dogs. It’s a fantastic city filled with museums, shopping, and industry. This midwestern …
