Raspberries are red, so why aren’t they redberries?
Today’s question:
Why do we call “blue” berries blueberries, “black” berries blackberries but we call “red” berries raspberries? Why not redberries instead?
Did you know redberry is another name for lingonberry? Lingonberries also are sometimes known as red whortleberries, cow berries, fox berries, mountain cranberries, mountain bilberries, or partridgeberries.
Why lingonberries should have so many alternate names I cannot say.
As for raspberries, there are a few explanations for the name.
One suggests it comes from “raspise,” a sweet rose-colored wine they used to drink 700 or so years ago.
Another idea is that raspberries take their name from an Old Walloon word, raspoie,” which meant “thicket.” If your mother ever sent you out on a sticky day in July to gather raspberries from a mosquito-plagued raspberry patch, you might favor that explanation.
Or it is possible the berry takes its name from “rasp,” as in a coarse file because of its rough appearance.
While we’re at it, raspberry in the sense of a rude, derisive noise comes from the 1890s and is a shortening of “raspberry tart,” rhyming slang for fart.
Do bees, specifically honey bees and carpenter bees, hibernate?
When the temperature hits 50, honeybees cluster in a corner of the hive with the worker bees crowding around the queen and shivering to generate heat. If the weather warms a bit a few bees might leave the hive briefly to remove waste.
Carpenter bees hibernate in old nesting sites when the weather turns cold.
Which languages do announcers use at the Olympics?
The official languages are English, French and the language of the host country. Why? Because the number of eligible countries for the games determines languages spoken. English is spoken in 88 countries worldwide and French is next with 28 countries.