In 2016 the British gynecological charity The Eve Appeal showed 1,000 women a medical drawing of the female reproductive system and asked them to place six labels on it. Forty-four percent could not identify the vagina. Sixty percent could not identify the vulva. Fewer than a third placed all six…

Latin had a word for acorn: glans. It covered nuts generally, and Latin lexicons such as Lewis and Short record the same word applied to the lead bullets Roman armies fired from slings — cast in the same tapered, rounded shape.