Each year in October, the Nobel Prize committee in Stockholm announces what has become a sort of gold medal for science, literature, and politics. Six annual winners receive a sum usually worth millions of dollars in addition to oodles of prestige. After you read this, you will always associate the namesake of the prize with the word boom. Why the Nobel story is explosive Alfred Nobel was …
What language do these words come from: ouch-cay, appy-hay, and ender-tay? If you guessed Pig Latin, you’re correct. What is Pig Latin? Pig Latin is not actually a language but a language game that children (and some adults) use to speak “in code.” Pig Latin words are formed by altering words in English. Here’s how it works: First, pick any English word. We’ll use dictionary. …
Most of us take our keyboards for granted. If we’re touch typists, we automatically position our fingers above the same eight keys and our muscle memory takes over. We just type! What does QWERTY mean? But our keyboards have an interesting history. Most English language keyboards have a QWERTY layout. And QWERTY isn’t an acronym or neologism. The name is simply the first six characters in …
As you read about the Pope in the latest news, you may begin to wonder about his name. After all, what does pope actually mean? And how does a pope get his name after he assumes the papacy? The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, and thereby the world leader of the Catholic Church. The word comes from the Latin pāpa, which means “father.” He is …
New York City goes by many names, such as the “City that Never Sleeps” and the less humble “Center of the Universe.” But the Big Apple is the most kenspeckled. There are many rumors about the history of the nickname. Did the city used to be filled with apple orchards? Does the name originate with a brothel madam named Eve? Actually, the widespread use of …
Thinly dressed with yellow mustard and slapped between two slices of white bread, bologna is found in the lunchboxes of many American youth. But, what does the cold cut have to do with baloney, a slang word that implies nonsense? The bologna sausage is traditionally made from the “odds and ends” of chicken, turkey, beef, or pork. It is similar to the Italian mortadella, which …
When someone casually uses a term they assume you understand but don’t, you have a few choices. You can get frustrated, or you can look it up. Financial jargon can be a code of confusing abbreviations and arithmetic. Let’s focus on one of the most common bits of shorthand: “the Dow.” What is the full name of the Dow? The full name for this measure of stock …
Pakistan means “land of the pure” in Urdu and Persian. It shares a suffix with Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. But, what does it mean? What does -stan mean? The suffix –stan is Persian and Urdu for “place of,” or “where one stands.” It is found in the names of seven countries: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. In most of these titles, the first part of the …
Our society’s constant obsession with relationships and especially celebrity marriages—with their ups and downs, and often very salacious details—can lead us to wonder and ask big questions about the words we use to talk about love, commitment, and desire. While this isn’t People magazine or “Dear Abby,” perhaps we can use our natural curiosity as an excuse to look at a dilemma of language that is …
Speaking in tongues, also referred to as gift of tongues or glossolalia, is a phenomenon that occurs when a person experiencing religious ecstasy or a trance utters incomprehensible sounds that they believe are a language spoken through them by a god or deity. It is believed that a person speaking in tongues is temporarily being gifted the ability to speak a language they do not …
Double or single scoop? Cone or cup? However you take it, all frozen desserts have one thing in common. Nothing tastes better on a summer afternoon than an ice-cold, sweet treat, and one of the most popular is frozen yogurt. Where does frozen yogurt get its name? Frozen yogurt is fairly new to the world of sweets. It was introduced in the 1970s under the …
Ah, wedding season. The middle of the year is a popular time to tie the knot, but after it’s all over, the newly married couple needs a little time to relax. Enter the honeymoon. These days honeymoon can be a noun that describes the post-wedding vacation or an adjective used to describe the place where the newlyweds sleep during their vacation, as in the honeymoon …
