“What’s your name?” “I’m Puddin’ Tame, ask me again and I’ll tell you the same!” This and other rhymes, such as “What’s your number? Cucumber!” derive from French, English, and American...
Why do we make a hand-crank motion when asking someone to roll down their window? After all, in most new cars, that’s done with the press of a button. An outmoded gesture like this is similar to a skeuomorph, a design element that still used...
What do you call it when you roll past a stop sign without coming to a complete stop? A California stop, a Michigan stop — or something else? And if someone calls you a voracious reader, would you be flattered or insulted? Also, Puddin’ Tame, the...
In one of history’s greatest stories about yarn, Theseus famously made it back out of the deadly Minotaur’s labyrinth by unspooling a ball of yarn so he could retrace his steps. In Middle English, such rolled-up yarn was called a clewe...
Do you refer to complimentary tickets to an event as Annie Oakleys? Or deadwoods, perhaps? The term Annie Oakley supposedly comes from a punched ticket’s resemblance to bullet-riddled cards from the sharpshooter’s Wild West shows...
Editors are great for picking up those double the’s and similar mistakes, known as eye-skip errors. This is part of a complete episode.