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It’s been five years of Mashed Radish. This calls for “punch.”
Mashed Radish turned five this week—and of course I forgot its birthday. Surely I was lost in the origin of some word or another. Still, the occasion calls for some celebration. Since we’re marking five years, why don’t we toast with some punch? Read more.
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The long, etymological trek of “caravan”
A so-called caravan has arrived at the US border after trekking thousands of miles across Mexico from Central America. Now numbering in the hundreds, the people, including many women and children, are seeking asylum in the US from violence back home. Caravan came to prominence earlier in April after Donald Trump tweeted an ominous reference Read more.
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TIME, emoji, and the unusual “with-” in “withdraw”
This past week, TIME magazine’s talented Katy Steinmetz interviewed me for a fantastic piece on the challenges of using words that have offensive histories, such as bulldozer. (Steinmetz also interviewed me back in 2016, you may recall, about the fascinating Japanese linguistics behind words like Pokémon and karaoke.) Catch up on my writing for the Read more.
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What is the “tres” in “trespass”?
The recent arrest of two black men at a Philadelphia Starbucks while waiting for a business associate has sparked outrage, protests, a national conversation on racism, and efforts from Starbucks to address implicit bias among its employees. It has also sparked, from me, an etymological consideration of two words that have frequently come up in Read more.
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Because there’s always a reason to talk about pets…and etymology
I could have written about Zuckerberg today, with the Facebook CEO in the congressional hot seat. His surname literally means “sugar mountain” in German—and I don’t think that’ll be the next Farmville or Candy Crush any time soon. I thought to write about raid, which the FBI did to Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen on Monday. Raid Read more.
Mashed Radish 