In your business, uh, words, how do you actually get to the truth? Is that really hard to do?

It is.

It's very hard.

Uh, so Martha and I, we're one tiny part of a larger community of, uh, professionals and amateurs who dig up word histories, and a lot of what we use is the digital resources that have become available in the last 30 years.

We're talking about digital databases that have trillions of words now optimized, and you can search and find things in a heartbeat for very little money.

And I can have a better impression and record of how people printed their language in the 1800s or 1700s now than the people who lived through the period.

... to deal with that.

Oh, and that reminds me of one that I do like, like, that is the last 20 years, to talk about how many spoons you have.

Right.

And it means more than one panino, a little bread roll.

Uh, the French did the same thing, so we're not alone.

They also borrowed the plural to mean a singular.

And the longer form in Italian is panino imbottito, uh, which literally means stuffed bread, but a better translation would be sandwiches.

(laughs)

But for a long time, uh, the saying only existed in the, the bread-baking world, and then by the 1950s, it entered everyday American English, uh, outside of bread land.

One weird thing is that prior to the sliced bread saying catching on, you would find other comparisons.

Hm.

But in Hawaii, that ice is referred to as shaved or shave ice.

You don't wanna add the D to shave if you're a Hawaiian local.

Um, that Hawaiian shave ice concept, it comes directly from the Japanese kakigori, uh, a dessert that goes back about 1,000 years in Japanese tradition.

In the late 1800s and the early 1900s, Japanese immigrants brought the practice of shaving ice to Hawaii-

Hm.

... and flavored it with syrups using fruit like mango and coconut and guava.

Now, that kakigori is another word that translates simply as shave ice, though there's one type of kakigori made with condensed milk that's called shirokuma, which is Japanese for polar bear.

Yeah.

And Chris, I would love to share with you one of my favorite expressions involving eggs.

I'm sure you know somebody like this.

Um, it's somebody who...

Well, as the Oxford English Dictionary says, they're known to break in fussily with an idle story.

You know, you're having a conversation-

Uh, but, but h- how does the, the five egg thing, uh, uh, w- why does it have that meaning?

Chris, I'm glad you asked, because we have an answer for you.