Allusionist 107. Apples

Late 2019 will see the biggest apple launch of our lifetimes. 22 years in the making, ripening on millions of trees into picture-perfect redness, here comes the WA38, more snazzily known as the Cosmic Crisp. The name was the result of a year of focus groups, taste tests and word associations - a far cry from when apples were named after whichever end of a cat they resembled.

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Allusionist 105. F'ood

When is cheese not cheese, or crab not crab? When itā€™s spelled cheez or krab or even chā€™eese or craā€™bā€¦ Novelty spellings for foods-that-arenā€™t-made-out-of-the-thing-they-sound-like-theyā€™re-made-out-of go back a pretty long way - ā€˜cheezā€™ was THE cheese-like substance of the 1920s - but right now, with plant-based foods on the rise, weā€™re seeing more of them.

Branding consultant and name developer Nancy Friedman casts her expert glance over the apostrophes and deliberate misspellings on foodstuffs; and vegan restaurant owner Melanie Boudens recounts how, this summer, the words ā€˜cheddar cheeseā€™ on her menu landed her in trouble.

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