A flash in the pan, meaning “something temporary or transient,” doesn’t derive from gold mining, nor does it have to do with cooking. It originated with firearms, specifically old-fashioned flintlock muskets. When a flinklock’s trigger is pulled...
Caitlin from Dallas, Texas, says that her family always referred to jiggly underarm skin as flying Bettys. They’re also known as bat wings, bingo wings, Hi Bettys, and Hello Helens. In German, they’re Winkerarme, or “waving arms.” In Brazil, they’re...
What’s a gongoozler? Today a gongoozler is anyone who just stands around watching things, but the term originated in the slang of British canal workers, who specifically applied it to onlookers inordinately interested in their work. A 1904 glossary...
It’s the ultimate road trip: A father and son retrace the journey of Odysseus and find a way to navigate their relationship. Plus, the story behind the phrase a flash in the pan: It has nothing to do with cooking or gold mining. Also, what’s a...
Novelist Charles Dickens and the musician Prince were very different types of artists, but they also had a lot in common. A new book chronicling their extraordinary careers becomes a larger meditation on perfectionism and creativity itself. Plus...
A writer stumbles upon a tiny, motionless creature on a country road and, against all good advice, takes it home. The resulting memoir, Raising Hare, is a lovely meditation on nature and our relationship to it. And: have you ever invented a fake...