Breakfast originally meant ending the period without food that happens while you sleep. That is why the first meal got its name.

The word orange entered English as the fruit’s name first. Only later did English speakers start using it as a color term.

“Scapegoat” began in an ancient ritual involving symbolic guilt. Today, it means a person unfairly blamed for others’ mistakes.

Noon did not always mean 12 p.m. It came from Latin for the ninth hour, once counted as about 3 p.m., before shifting to midday.

“The bitter end” started as a nautical term for the end of an anchor rope fastened to a bitt, before it gained a figurative meaning.