Susie Dent’s murder mystery Guilty by Definition (Bookshop|Amazon) includes the word grob, an obsolete word meaning to search in the dark earch by the sense of touch, as when feeling around in one’s pocket for change. (A groat is a medieval British silver coin worth four pence.) This is part of a complete episode.
In English, you can express skepticism with the classic saying when pigs fly. In Tagalog, a similar sentiment is expressed with a phrase that translates “when the crow turns white, when the heron turns black,” and there’s a Hungarian phrase that...
Dax in Santa Cruz, California, wonders: Now that we’re into the 21st century, when will people stop saying that initial 20 when referring to a year such as 2028 the way we dropped the 19 in the term 1980s and just started referring to the ’80s? This...
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