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Why “turkey” is named after the country
We can thank Turkish trading—and Turkish naming trends—for the name of this Thanksgiving bird. Read more.
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typhoon
Fast Mash Typhoon reaches English–translated from the Italian, itself from the Portuguese tufão–in the late 1580s, and its various spellings point to various possible sources Typhoon may be from the Arabic tufan (“violent storm of wind and rain”), related to tafa (“to turn around”) It may also be from the Greek typhon (“whirlwind” and name of a monstrous,… Read more.
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aloha
The Mashed Radish will be off the next week or so. I’m happy to be celebrating a family wedding on the island of Maui in Hawaii. Technically, that’s in Maui County, which seems like such an incongruous thing to say. One just does not associates islands with counties. Aloha–which, in English, has come to be… Read more.
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socks & cardinals
Fast Mash Sock, attested as socc as far back as 725, is from the Latin, soccus, meaning “slipper,” which may come from a yet more Ancient Greek word for some type of early footwear Cardinal, as in “fundamental” and numbers, comes from Latin’s cardo (hinge) The adjective form of the noun, cardinalis, gave us the name for the Catholic… Read more.
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on shakespeare, surfers, & slang
“Gnar-gnar.” Forget you, grammar scolds. It’s an utterance like “gnar-gnar”–which I heard my fiancée’s sister pull out of her ever playful idiolect for gnarly (that’s a compliment, Britt)–that makes me love language. Because, in all its clipped and reduplicative glory, “gnar-gnar” spans an invisible bridge between Shakespeare and surfers. And because it also gives me occasion… Read more.