Cain from Dublin, Ireland, wonders why sportscasters in his country often say a team’s at sixes and sevens when they’re looking disorganized or nonplussed. The leading theory suggests that sixes and sevens, primarily heard in the United Kingdom, comes from a French dice games similar to craps, called hazard, wherein to set on cinque and sice (from the French words for five and six) was the riskiest roll. This is part of a complete episode.
More from this show
Unparalleled misalignments are pairs of phrases in which the words in one phrase are each synonyms of the words in the other, but the phrases themselves mean different things. For example, the phrase blanket statement can be paired with cover story...
Jameela in Charlotte, North Carolina, says her family refers to their television’s remote control as the clicker, but her friends insist on calling it the remote. These devices go by other names as well, including doofer, flicker, zapper, and...