Carol in Williamsburg, Virginia, wonders why if you bake something and don’t rely on pre-mixed ingredients, you’re said to bake it from scratch. This expression originally referred to a line scratched into the ground to mark the starting point of a race. If the runners all start from scratch, then no one has an advantage over the other; they’re all starting from the most basic point. The expression up to scratch meaning “ready” or “up to the task” originally involved a line marked on the ground running diagonally across a boxing ring. When a competitor was ready to meet an opponent, that person was said to come up to the scratch or come up to scratch. 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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