The Etymology of Food Words

Used judiciously, the snappy tidbits of food etymology in “Romaine Wasn’t Built in a Day,” a new book by the medieval scholar Judith Tschann, could make you a hit at dinner parties. Say someone shows up in a seersucker suit. You could inform her that the British took the word seersucker from the Hindi sirsakar,…

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Long Covid Patients More Likely to Have Gastrointestinal Problems, Study Finds

The patients became infected during the pandemic’s early waves, testing positive for the coronavirus between March 1, 2020, and Jan. 15, 2021, the overwhelming majority before vaccines were available. Dr. Al-Aly and Dr. Mehandru noted that the experience might be different for people infected more recently. Newer virus variants might have different effects, they said,…

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Making Luxury Ice at Home

Nobody loves ice more than Americans. It’s a running joke, a quirk of the national personality: Iced drinks are as American as rock ‘n’ roll, pickup trucks and to-go cups. Way back in 1895, Mark Twain wrote that ice had become so inextricably linked with the United States that “there is but a single specialty…

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