MaryAnne from Dallas, Texas, says that sometimes when she or her siblings asked her father how much he spent on something he’d answer A buck three-eighty. It’s one of many similar expressions that allow the speaker to give an approximate answer or just shrug and dismiss the question altogether, including A dollar three-eighty, buck one-eighty, buck two-eighty, buck three-eighty, buck two-ninety, buck two-ninety-eight, buck two-ninety-five,nickel ninety-five, and eleventy-seven. This is part of a complete episode.
In Hong Kong English, Add oil! means something like “Go on!” or “Go for it!” A recent addition to the Oxford English Dictionary, this expression of encouragement comes from Cantonese (加油 or gā yáu; rendered as jiāyóu from Mandarin) and draws on the...
A Green Bay Packers fan wonders why a quarterback who’s tackled is said to be sacked. The roots of the word sack as in “bag” goes back thousands of years, all the way to Akkadian, later spreading through Greek, Latin, and then to Romance and...
