Byron in Florence, South Carolina, is curious about his grandmother’s expression might as well, can’t dance, which she used when someone suggested an activity. This saying, as well as longer versions, are rooted in the idea of weather-dependent farm work, such as can’t dance, never could sing, and it’s too wet to plow, and can’t dance, it’s too wet to plow, too dry to stack hay, too windy to pick rocks — and anyway, Granny’s got the motorcycle. This is part of a complete episode.
If you start the phrase when in Rome… but don’t finish the sentence with do as the Romans do, or say birds of a feather… without adding flock together, you’re engaging in anapodoton, a term of rhetoric that refers to the...
There are many proposed origins for the exclamation of surprise, holy Toledo! But the most likely one involves not the city in Ohio, but instead Toledo, Spain, which has been a major religious center for centuries in the traditions of both Islam and...
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