John in Dallas, Texas, wonders about the phrase Hail fellow well met. This expression combines two old phrases. The first is hail, fellow!, once a warm casual greeting. To be hail fellow with someone meant “to be on friendly terms with” them. Phrases such as well met,happily met, and fortunately met served as greetings between acquaintances. By the late 16th century, hail fellow and well met merged into one emphatic noun and adjective. Today the adjective hail-fellow-well-met describes someone who’s warm and jovial, although it often carries a connotation of being a little too warm and jovial, as well as overly familiar and too aggressively self-promoting. This is part of a complete episode.
When you’re talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn’t...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...
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