Mike in Jacksonville, Florida, is curious about the phrase There’s no use in keeping the dogs and doing the barking yourself. His dad would use it when delegating a chore to one of his kids. As early as the 1500s, the proverb Don’t keep a dog and bark yourself was circulating in English. The idea is that it’s a waste to hire or procure someone else to do a job but then try to do it yourself. This is part of a complete episode.
A member of the ski patrol at Vermont’s Sugarbush Resort shares some workplace slang. Boilerplate denotes hard-packed snow with a ruffled pattern that makes skis chatter, death cookies are random chunks that could cause an accident, and...
A resident of Michigan’s scenic Beaver Island shares the term, boodling, which the locals use to denote the social activity of leisurely wandering the island, often with cold fermented beverages. There have been various proposed etymologies...
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