Some of the most interesting, unusual words describe everyday things. Who
would have thought that this fleshy, spongy, white thing inside an orange
had a word for itself... and that it would share it with astronomers? Or
that it would have the same ancestor as the words for an egg part, a photo
book, or smearing of a canvas? What all these words have in common is
whiteness or albus, Latin for white. Albumen is egg white, an album is
a book with (usually) white pages, and when we daub a sheet of paper, we
de-albus it. Ah, the joy of words! Let's look at a few other words for
odds and ends during this week.