When plucked from a garden catalog and scattered on a page, the names of flower, fruit, and vegetable seeds can lead to surprisingly sexy poetry. This is part of a complete episode.
A father and son are having an ongoing discussion about which came first — the color orange or the name of the fruit? The citrus got there first. The original name of this fruit comes from Sanskrit naranga, or “orange tree.” A German...
If you’re not late for something, you could say that you’re in good season. This phrase, which shows up in Noah Webster’s dictionaries from the 1820s, derives from the agricultural state of fruits and vegetables being in season...
The Arabic idiom in the apricot season translates to “in your dreams,” presumably because the growing season for this fruit is so brief. Incidentally, the etymological root of “apricot,” which means “to ripen...
Which came first, orange the color or orange the fruit? And what’s a busman’s holiday? Martha and Grant talk about bumbershoots, brollies, nursery rhymes, and alternatives to the word unicycle. Plus, an app-inspired quiz, favorite...
There’s another brand-new episode for you to catch up on, in which we talk about “sonker” (a kind of fruit cobbler), suss (is it British?), roly-polies (a bug which by any other name would still look like a tiny armadillo), and a big...