TIL that I can't spell worth a crap. Any chance to accept alternate spellings of piccolo? I tried piccilo and piccalo and gave up. I know, I should just learn to spell...
'America' comes from Richard Ameryk - not Amerigo Vespucci. Ameryk was chief patron for John Cabot/Giovanni Caboto's exploratory voyages.Vespucci never used the term itself (he never even got to North America) and the earliest mentions of 'America' were in Bristol (England) - where Ameryk was based.
They don't really. They just say there isn't hard evidence for it, but there isn't for vespuccio either (and using a first name isn't something that is generally done) they just agreed to stick with the other one.
This is useful for improving my spelling. I knew all of these words but probably would have spelled half of them with only once 'C'. Hopefully I remember now.
The nearly 30-year feud was a long-running battle between the Hatfield family of West Virginia, and the McCoys who lived across the creek in Kentucky. It began with Civil War skirmishes, flared up again over a hog, then again when a McCoy daughter married a Hatfield son, and eventually there was shooting into and burning of homes. Several family members were killed by the other side through the years, and state militia groups were also involved. A case arising from the feud regarding extradition went to the US Supreme Court. There have been books and movies about the feud, and it has become a common phrase used in the US as in, "Those kids are fighting like the Hatfields and McCoys." The feud is also referred to in the Waylon Jennings/Willie Nelson song, Luckenbach, Texas - "This successful life we're living has us feuding like the Hatfields and McCoys." So now you know and didn't have to look it up, but it's a really interesting history and I recommend you do.
Haven't seen anyone else mention bocconcini for 'small italian dumplings', when the dictionary definition of the two words are exactly the same. Gnocchi are little balls of potato, not very dumpling-like at all
I guess it's the difference between what we think of as (for instance) a Chinese-style dumpling with a filling vs a chicken-and-dumplings style dumpling where it's more like a (American) biscuit. Gnocchi is pretty similar to the latter