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.
According to Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English (Bookshop|Amazon) by Ben Yagoda, the word smarmy, meaning “unctuous” or “ingratiating,” may come from a 19th-century magazine contest, in which readers sent in...
Mary Beth in Greenville, South Carolina, wonders: Why do we say four-oh-nine for the number 409 instead of four-zero-nine or four-aught-nine? What are the rules for saying either zero or oh or aught or ought to indicate that arithmetical symbol...
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