How do dictionaries define colors? And why are some of those definitions so confusing, like “stronger than carmine” and “bluer than fiesta”? Dictionary editor Kory Stamper explains it all in her new book. Plus, the story behind the expression more bang for your buck goes back to World War II. And did you know there’s a term for those pieces of green plastic fringe in supermarket displays that makes things look more appetizing? Keep an eye out for parsley runners! Also: brolic, more bang for your buck, feeling dingy, mirabiliary, a brain teaser about verbal misunderstandings, between the mustard and the mayo, liminal, the German disease, and the sayings It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good and Hay is for horses, straw is cheaper, grass is free, marry a farmer, and you have all three.
This episode first aired April 11, 2026.
Winn-Dixie’s Mid-Filet Parsley Runners
Those green plastic strips tucked between cuts of meat in supermarket display cases? They’re parsley runners, the result of recommendations from a professional color consultant hired by a grocery chain in the 1950s. Under bright store lights, the meat looked pale and unappetizing, so the consultant proposed a simple solution: Green and red are complementary colors, so placing green beside raw meat makes it look fresher and more vibrant. Butchers already knew this, which is why they’d long used real parsley for garnish. Lexicographer Kory Stamper explains more about the psychology of color and the history of efforts to describe its visual properties accurately in her new book True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color from Azure to Zinc Pink. (Bookshop|Amazon)
So…A Button on Your Underwear, Ice Cube, and Tuna
Daniel from Gardnerville, Nevada, remembers his aunt had a habit of responding to anyone who left the word so hanging there in mid-conversation with, Sew a button on your underwear. It’s is one of a whole family of playful rejoinders, including Sew a button on an ice cube, Sew buttons on ice cream, Sew buttons on tuna, Sew buttons on eggs, Sew buttons on Easter eggs, Sew buttons on your vest, Sew buttons on your T-shirt, and Sew buttons on a brick wall. Other snarky replies include Sew, suck your toe, and Sew buttons on your old man’s pants, as well as Sew buttons on your butt, that’s what and Sew buttons on a balloon and then you’ll have a blast. Then there’s the even more elaborate Sew buttons, buttons are made of brass, buttons keep your trousers from falling off your…well, you can guess the rest. There’s also the one where somebody starts with Well, only to be answered with That’s a deep subject for such a shallow mind. Similarly, when someone says Hey!, a wiseacre may respond with Hay is for horses or even Hay is for horses, straw is cheaper, grass is free, marry a farmer, and you have all three. These teasing comebacks serve an additional purpose, nudging speakers toward complete thoughts and finished sentences.
Bang for the Buck
Mark from Greenville, South Carolina, has heard that the phrase more bang for your buck originated with the U.S. nuclear weapons program and wonders if it’s true. The expression is more broadly associated with post-World War II U.S. military culture. It appears in some 1953 new articles by syndicated Washington columnist Stuart Alsop about a military restructuring known as the New Look, involving troop cuts and increased reliance on airpower and nuclear weapons. Alsop used the phrase repeatedly, and because his column was widely syndicated, it caught on fast. The word bang traces back to Old Norse, while buck meaning “dollar” may go all the way back to buckskins used as barter on the American frontier.
Your Elbow is Close
In Russian, an expression for something tantalizingly close but forever out of reach translates as “Your elbow is close, but you can’t bite it.” Much like the English phrase when pigs fly, it’s another colorful way of describing the impossible.
Misheard Through a Wall Word Quiz
Quiz Guy John Chaneski was inspired by his college-age son’s remote classes, which he could hear but not quite make out through the wall. For this week’s puzzle, he offers a similarly garbled description of a college course. For example, which college subject might be suggested by the following words misheard: “In this course, we will be studying strife and all its adversity.”
Has “Liminal” Become a More Common Word?
Nancy from New Haven, Connecticut, has noticed the word liminal turning up everywhere lately and wonders if she’s imagining it. She’s not. The word’s use has risen sharply since around 2021, particularly in long-form journalism and public radio. Rooted in the Latin limen, meaning “threshold,” liminal describes a kind of “in-between state.” The related phrase liminal spaces took on a specific internet aesthetic around 2019, when images of deserted hotel corridors, empty classrooms, and unused auditoriums began circulating on TikTok and Tumblr. There’s also something about the look of the thinner, lower-case letters in the word liminal that seems reminiscent of what the word itself means.
Mirabiliary
Here’s a word from the 1600s that deserves more use: mirabiliary, which means “a person who deals in marvels or collects marvelous things,” from the Latin word for “wonder.”
Don’t Be A Come-Upper
Stacey from Chelsea, Massachusetts, says her grandfather, a Russian immigrant who grew up on New York City’s Lower East Side, used to warn his grandkids with what sounded like Don’t be a come-upper after he’d cleaned the apartment. The expression puzzled the whole family for years. A come-upper is someone full of ideas and energy, always aspiring, always on the move. In Jewish tradition there’s a long-standing ambivalence about getting too far ahead of yourself or standing out too much from the rest, and grandfather’s warning may have carried exactly that spirit. In other words: The house is clean, so don’t go getting any ideas about new ways to wreck it.
It’s an Ill Wind That Blows No Good
A Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, listener has been pondering the saying It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, and specifically whether she uses it correctly. The expression usually appears as It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, means that even bad events usually benefit someone. The phrase goes back at least to the 16th century, and Shakespeare uses it to devastating effect inHenry VI, Part Three, Act 2, Scene 5, when a soldier triumphantly looting a battlefield corpse turns the body over and realizes he has killed his own father.
The Democratic Chaos of Language vs. the Curated Precision of Science
The entry for geranium lake in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary describes it as “a vivid red that is lighter and slightly yellower and stronger than apple red, yellower, lighter, and stronger than carmine, and bluer, lighter, and stronger than scarlet.” Another entry defines geranium red as being “slightly lighter than Goya.” How did color definitions this complex and weird end up in dictionaries? Lexicographer Kory Stamper’s new book True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color from Azure to Zinc Pink (Bookshop|Amazon) answers that question, tracing the collision between what she calls the democratic chaos of language and the curated precision of science, plus the challenge of lexicographers struggling to write about color in an era of mass production, military supply chains, and increasingly sophisticated colorimetry.
What Is “the German Disease”?
A Utah listener recalls a story about her German-speaking mother-in-law referring to a childhood illness as the German disease. In English, the term most commonly referred to syphilis, a disease that different cultures blamed on their neighbors with remarkable consistency. The English dubbed it the French pox, the French referred to it with words that translates as “the Neapolitan disease,” the Italians thought of it as “the French sickness,” the Dutch blamed the Spanish, the Russians blamed the Polish, and in Muslim Turkey, the illness was blamed on all of Christianity! You can almost track the spread of syphilis across the globe by following the blame-by-name. The listener’s relative’s use of the German disease for a childhood illness most likely referred instead to influenza or the German measles.
Keep the Car Between the Mustard and the Mayo
A newscaster covering treacherous driving conditions offered this advice: Keep it between the mustard and the mayo. In other words, “Make sure your car stays between the yellow line and the white line on the road.”
Brolic Physique
Amir from Chicago, Illinois, grew up hearing the word brolic, meaning “extremely muscular, physically imposing” from his father, who grew up in the Farragut Projects in Brooklyn. The word has clear New York City roots, with an early notable appearance in a track from the Notorious B.I.G. album Long Kiss, where he rhymes brolic with alcoholic. From Biggie Smalls and hip-hop it migrated into weightlifting and bodybuilding communities. Curiously, French slang has an identical-sounding word, also from hip-hop, also appearing around the same time, but in French, where brolic means armed with a gun, likely derived from calibre spelled backward. The two words, with the same sound, both about masculinity, arriving independently on opposite sides of the Atlantic in different flavors of hip-hop are probably a coincidence, but who can say for sure?
Feeling Dingy
Morgan from Los Angeles, California, has always used dingy (pronounced with a hard G, like dinghy) to describe that woozy, muddle-headed feeling that comes with being sick, a sense she picked up from her mother. Standard dictionaries offer entries close to this meaning, with definitions like “foolish” or “crazy,” but they don’t quite capture the specific physical sensation she describes. In digitized book archives, however, there are plenty of examples used just this way, including a football player feeling dingy after a concussion. The word likely comes from other, similar words suggesting something’s off-kilter, including dingbat, ding-dong, and ding-a-ling.
This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and produced by Stefanie Levine.
Photo by Breibeest. Used and modified under a Creative Commons license.
Books Mentioned in the Episode
| True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color from Azure to Zinc Pink by Kory Stamper (Bookshop|Amazon) |
| Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon) |
