Elena in Mt. Holly, North Carolina, wonders why beeline means “a direct route.” Well, once a bee has gathered sufficient nectar from flowers, she flies in a straight course back to the hive. In The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861 (Bookshop|Amazon), the author describes spending time with people who enjoy beelining or bee-hunting, a pastime that involves following bees back to their hive, sort of like geocaching, but with honey. 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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