Archive for September, 2006

cushy

I'm always a little surprised to find that a common English word that I don't associate with Asia derives directly from an East Asian or South Asian root. I've known...

scoria

Seen in a submission. "Scoria" (derived eventually from Greek "skōr," meaning "excrement") means "slag." Emphasis on first syllable. Amusingly, MW11 defines "scoria" as "slag," and defines "slag" as "the dross...

chyme

As food travels through the digestive system, it spends some time in the stomach, where it's turned into a "semifluid mass" (says MW11) called "chyme." See The Digestive System for...

dooley

A submission referred to "Ford dooleys," obviously (from context) a kind of vehicle. I spent a while poking around online trying to find out more; encountered the spellings "doolie," "duelly,"...

nabe

Turns out "nabe" is short for "neighborhood" (in the sense, I think, of the community that lives near you); apparently originally used in the phrase "the nabes" to refer to...

canvas

It turns out that the word "canvas" derives ultimately from the Latin word "cannabis"; which, of course, means "hemp." Not only that, but apparently the word "hemp" itself may be...