(PET-rih-kor)

Means: The earthy smell when rain hits dry ground after a dry spell.

Etymology: Brand new, as words go. Two Australian scientists, Isabel Joy Bear and Richard Thomas, coined it in a 1964 paper in Nature. They built it from Greek petra ("stone") and ichor, the fluid said to run in the veins of the gods. So it's basically "the blood of the stones."

"First rain in a month, back porch, cold beer, and that petrichor. Don't call me."

The Shakers were a celibate Christian sect that peaked at about 5,000 members in villages from Maine to Indiana, and they built furniture like God was checking the joints. No carving, no veneer, no fuss: straight lines, slim tapered legs, woven seats, and dovetails done right. A wooden peg rail ran around every room about six feet up, so chairs could hang upside down while the floor got swept. By the 1870s their factory in Mount Lebanon, New York, was selling chairs by catalog in numbered sizes from 0 to 7. Celibacy being what it is, they're down to three members in Sabbathday Lake, Maine. But those plain flat-panel "Shaker" cabinet doors in a whole lot of kitchen remodels still carry their name.

That flat metal opener with the pointy end is a church key. When Krueger's put beer in cans in Richmond, Virginia, in 1935, the cans had flat steel tops and no way in. So American Can Company patented a punch opener that same year and gave them away with the beer. You punched one triangle to drink from and a second one to let air in. Nobody's sure about the name. It looks like an old church-door key, and some say it was a wink at guys who'd rather be at the bar than in a pew. Pull tabs started killing it off in the 1960s.

My son asked what the internet was like before smartphones. Same thing, I told him: same arguments, same lies, same naked people. You just had to go sit in the den to get them.

Turn LOSE into WINS in 4 steps, changing one letter at a time. Every step has to be a real word.

Answer in tomorrow's issue.