Sean from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, is an editor who reads lots of fiction from the 1930s, in which he often runs into the words spondulix and simoleons, meaning “a large amount of money.” They’re both Americanisms. Spondulix, also spelled spondulicks or spondulux, may derive from the Greek word spondylos, meaning “vertebra” or “spine,” suggesting the similarity between a column of those bones and coined stacked for counting. Simoleon is more of a mystery, although some have suggested a link with semolina flour, given that there’s a long list of food names that are used as slang for “money,” including cabbage, cheddar, chicken feed, peanuts, and coliander, a variant of coriander. This is part of a complete episode.
When you’re talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn’t...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...
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