Five decades before Google became one of the biggest tech companies in the world, the word “googol” originally referred to 10 to the 100th power.

Originally, the word “average” referred to a maritime shipping policy. The mathematical sense familiar to us today was a later development.

Why does English have so many irregular verbs? Why does is it have so many synonyms? Why don’t tough, through, and dough rhyme? In this conversation, linguist Arika Okrent answers these questions and many more.

Until the 19th century, English had another form of lowercase “s” that looked remarkably like an f: ſ. Also until the 19th century, the ampersand symbol, &, was often counted as the 27th letter of the alphabet.

While the ligatures æ (ash) and œ (ethel) are rarely used in English writing today, in prior centuries, they were an important part of the language’s orthography.

This episode looks at how an Ancient Greek word associated with barley likely gave us the word today used for Italian durum wheat products. We also uncover the hidden connections among pasta, paste, pastel, pastry, and other related words.

This episode looks at the etymologies of our meal words (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) in addition to the etymology of the word meal itself. The meanings of our meal words have shifted over time in relation to the time of day at which the meals are eaten.

The Ancient Greek word kaktos passed into Modern English as ‘cactus,’ yet the plant originally designated by kaktos was actually more like an artichoke. This episode explores the unlikely connection between the words for ‘artichoke’ and ‘cactus.’

The word apple once referred to fruits in general. This archaic usage hides in plain sight in a handful of other fruit names.

If cheese is one of the oldest Latin-derived words in English, then where do the etymologically unrelated Italian and French words formaggio and fromage come from?

The word ‘egg’ comes from the language of the Vikings. During the Middle English period, different regions of England used different words for eggs.

A ‘red herring’ is literally a smoked fish. In its idiomatic sense, a red herring is a logical fallacy or misleading clue. So what’s the connection?

Of all places, why do we put the proof in the pudding? Like many idioms whose origins date back several centuries, the connection between the phrase’s literal and figurative meanings is no longer clear.