Dan in South Bend, Indiana, wonders about the phrase good egg, meaning “a good-natured, kind person.” The expression good egg was preceded by bad egg, that is, a literal egg determined to be undesirable by viewing it close to a candle. Bad apple, on the other hand, meaning “troublemaker,” originally referred to a rotting apple that had the potential to ruin an entire barrel of them, hence One rotten apple spoils the barrel. Variations of this idea of one item causing ruin for many more are reflected in many modern European languages, as well as in Latin. In Spanish and other Iberian languages, a similar expression translates as “A bad goat leads the whole flock astray.” This is part of a complete episode.
The English language has a variety of expressions referring to the excretion of moisture from the skin due to heat. There’s the verb perspire and the Yiddish borrowing schvitz. If you perspire profusely, you may sweat buckets, or be sweating like a...
A Havertown, Pennsylvania, listener wonders why her mother used to answer queries about how she was doing with phrase that sounded like either fair to midland or fair to middling. Middling has long meant “just OK” or “right in the middle,” and the...
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