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 made-up words such as screel, meaning “the sound of a knife scratching against a plate.” The verb smarm, meaning “to smear,” had been around for a few decades, but the first recorded use of smarmy is in reference to an entry in the contest. 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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