mezzaluna

This crescent-shaped chopping knife takes its name from the Italian mezza luna, meaning "half-moon." The Italian mezza--or its masculine counterpart, mezzo--are more familiar as musical terms as in "mezzo soprano" (a voice half-way between a soprano and a contralto) and "mezza orchestra" (a musical composition requiring only half the orchestra). Luna derives from the same Latin source that gave English "lunar" and "lunatic" (originally, a person made mad by the moon).

what is an ort?

an ort was originally a scrap of food or leftover fodder not eaten by cattle or pigs. The word then came to be applied to leftovers from the kitchen table, leftovers that were also known as relief or relics. Ort appeared in the mid fifteenth century as a compound of the prefix oor, meaning not, and etan, meaning to eat; quite literally, therefore, orts are the uneaten scraps of a meal.

mark morton is the author of Cupboard Love: A Dictionary of Culinary Curiosities (Insomniac Press, 2004). His most recent books are The Lover's Tongue: A Merry Romp through the Language of Love and Sex and The End: Closing Words for a Millennium. He teaches English and Learning Technologies at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

previous orts:
fletcherize
abligurition
cornucopia
banyan day
spurtle
appetite
plague-water
nym
spork