After our conversation about the expression dingle day, a term used by workers at a research station in Antarctica to denote bright, sunny weather, a listener offers a possible explanation for this term. It may derive from the idea of the skies being clear enough to see the nearby Dingle Nunatak. A nunatak is an isolated mountain projecting through glacial ice, and derives from an Inuit term. This is part of a complete episode.
According to Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English (Bookshop|Amazon) by Ben Yagoda, the word smarmy, meaning “unctuous” or “ingratiating,” may come from a 19th-century magazine contest, in which readers sent in...
Mary Beth in Greenville, South Carolina, wonders: Why do we say four-oh-nine for the number 409 instead of four-zero-nine or four-aught-nine? What are the rules for saying either zero or oh or aught or ought to indicate that arithmetical symbol...
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