The phrase This ain’t my first rodeo, meaning “This isn’t my first time” or “I already have experience with this” goes back at least as far as the 1981 Joan Crawford biopic Mommie Dearest, where Faye Dunaway as...
After our conversation about various names for a television remote control, a listener emailed to say that early remote controls produced an audible tone that activated the TV channel changer and volume, and whenever his dogs Lupe and Bubba stood up...
Sara in Madison, Wisconsin, was reading an old edition of The Joy of Cooking and came across a recipe that described a cake’s ingredients as earrings for an elephant. She couldn’t discern whether the authors meant that was a good thing...
Charlotte from Princeton, Kentucky, wonders: What’s the difference between a spider web and a cobweb? There’s a bit of semantic differentiation between the two: A cobweb is usually an old spider web, while a spider web that’s not...
Scientists decided to name some newly discovered tree frogs in Madagascar based on the boops and trills they make, which reminded the researchers of Star Trek. Among the scientific names for these critters that belong to the rare Boophis frog genus...
Lachryphagy is literally “tear-eating,” and refers to the way some insects crawl up to the eyes of much larger animals to sip their protein-rich tears. The name of the wine Lachryma Christi means “tear of Christ,” and someone...