@Felthry yes. Pestle is the boy you hold in your hand and squish against the side of the mortar!
@Felthry bit. Bit. Not boy.
spoilers for correct answer
The way I remember which is which is that "pestle" sounds like (and comes from the same origin as) "pistil", the bit in the center of a flower that sticks up as opposed to the bowl formed by the petals.
@Felthry I've been recently playing a mod for the videogame 7 Days to Die that adds a mortar and pestle. So I didn't know which was which, but I did know that they were the things used to make spices and powders.
@Squika they're just for crushing pretty much anything--frequently used in chemistry labs and cooking, for instance!
-F
@Felthry I own a mortar and pestle, so I definitely learned it at some point : :breadthink:
@GreySleeves well, you could absolutely own a set without knowing which name goes to which part, or even really realizing that they have individual names!
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@Felthry Definitely, but I usually identify what things before buying them. Usually. Can't say I did the same for my car, though 
@Felthry couldn't tell ya what a transmission is 
@GreySleeves We purchased some food today without knowing what it was! or rather, we thought we knew what it was (chocolate cake with mousse icing) and were wrong (it was chocolate cake with cheesecake)
fortunately it was still very tasty
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@Felthry it occurs to me that I tend to examine the ingredients of anything that I haven't tried before, (I've experimented with different diets, so I'm used to looking at the labels)
I've been trying to find more veggies that I'm down with lately e.g. Shiitake and lotus roots are some of my favorite stir-fry ingredients that I've only just discovered probably within the past year :3
@Felthry I've never actually heard which was which, but mortar firework tubes are geometrically similar to the bowl part, and that's PROBABLY for a reason.
@VoxSomniator if you put a pestle into *that* kind of mortar, you're doing things wrong
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@Felthry I'm trying to powder a cloud!
this was interesting results! The majority of people have it right, and most of the rest weren't sure which name went to what, but it looks like a significant minority were confident that it was the other way around, and two or three people had never really separated the term "mortar and pestle" out to realize that it's literally a "mortar" and a "pestle" and not one thing called a "mortar and pestle"
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