9 Everyday Things You Use Constantly That Have a Real, Slightly Ridiculous Name
The plastic tip on your shoelace. The dent above your lip. The smell of rain after a dry spell. They all have names. You just don’t know them yet.
Part of: Weird But True
Once you learn that the plastic tip of a shoelace is called an aglet, you cannot un-learn it. This is the gateway drug to a much weirder list — and you’ll quote it at every dinner party for the next month.
Aglet is the famous one. It refers to that small plastic or metal sleeve at the end of a shoelace. Its job is purely structural. Its name is purely satisfying.
The little indent above your upper lip is called the philtrum. Ancient Greeks believed it was where memory of life before birth was sealed shut at the moment you were born. We mostly use it now to balance lipstick.
That earthy smell after rain is petrichor — coined by two Australian scientists in 1964 who isolated the oils plants release into dry soil. The word combines petros (stone) with ichor (the fluid of the gods).
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The space between your eyebrows is the glabella. The dot over a lowercase i or j is a tittle. The metal box on the back of a truck holding the licence plate light is, beautifully, just called a number plate housing — proving that not everything has a poetic name.
Knowing these doesn’t change much. It does, however, make you slightly more annoying at dinner parties, which is its own reward.
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Sources
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Original editorial. Written by The Daily Stash Editors. See our editorial policy.