If ever there was a plant to “take a notion,” as the old folks in my family used to say, it’s a watermelon. In exploring this issue, allow me to present two modest case studies: Exhibit A: During my most recent teaching gig, a third grader came back to class after lunch with a single […]
Tag: watermelons
The great watermelon caper
My sister Mary retired recently. Cue the language-nerd digression: “retire” has no common ancestor with “tired”; rather, it means to “pull back from.” So retired people are not necessarily exhausted. The Spanish word for retirement is “jubilar,” which shares a cognate with the English word “jubilation.” Thus, we can say that Mary has pulled back […]