Jane in Tippecanoe, Indiana, was intrigued by a phrase she encountered while reading Kinky Friedman’sArmadillos and Old Lace. (Bookshop|Amazon). She remembers hearing the phrase crazy as a bedbug, and wonders about Friedman’s use of the phrase crazy as a Betsy bug. Both phrases refer to the insect behavior — the erratic movements of bedbugs and the stridulation, or shrill noise of Odontotaenius disjunctus. The latter also goes by such colloquial names as patent-leather beetle, bessy bug, and best bug. This is part of a complete episode.
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
If someone’s got melon, it means they’re smart. The expression most likely arose because of the resemblance between a melon and a human head. Several other foods are associated with having brains, including a cabbage, a gourd, and even a...
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