If you hear the word Jack-o’-lantern, you likely picture a hollowed-out pumpkin with carved eyes and mouth lit by a candle inside the pumpkin. Some are scary and some are funny. However, the association between carved pumpkins, now an iconic…

What do you picture when you hear the word tawdry? You probably think of something cheap or gaudy: maybe some loud shirt that people wore to discos in the ’70s; maybe a woman’s bright yellow silk necktie with purple and…

Walnut, acorn, almond, chestnut, hazelnut. Those are all nutty-sounding names for nuts. But filbert? Where did that one come from? Filbert is an alternative name for a hazelnut. The present spelling came into usage in the late fourteenth century. It…