A member of our Facebook group reports that her mother used to deride a privileged and expensively dressed woman with the phrase, Oh, she thinks she’s so katish! Used since the 1890s in the North Central part of the United States, katish or catish or kitash is a dialectal term meaning “fine,” “elegant,” or “stylish.” It’s pronounced with stress on the second syllable: kuh-TISH. This is part of a complete episode.
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
If someone’s got melon, it means they’re smart. The expression most likely arose because of the resemblance between a melon and a human head. Several other foods are associated with having brains, including a cabbage, a gourd, and even a...
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