Eduarda phones from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to ask about the English expression burn the midnight oil, meaning “to work late.” The phrase goes back to the days of having to use oil lamps for illumination at night. A Spanish idiom somewhat along...
If you want to be a better writer, try skipping today’s bestsellers, and read one from the 1930’s instead. Or read something besides fiction in order to find your own metaphors and perspective. Plus, just because a city’s name looks familiar doesn’t...
Why doesn’t an usher ush? The word goes all the way back to Latin os, meaning “mouth,” and its derivative ostium, meaning “door.” An usher was originally a servant in charge of letting people in and out of a door. This is part of a complete episode...
Scratch an itch is standard, and it’s much more widely accepted than using itch transitively, as in itch my back. Robin in Paris, Virginia, has a movie-night wager riding on the question because his wife insists that the hand does the scratching and...
Jennifer from Racine, Wisconsin, uses hooptie — also spelled hoopty or hoopdee — for her aging 1988 Mazda RX-7 convertible, despite her husband’s doubts that the word is real. The slang dates at least to the 1960s, when it could simply mean a car or...
Digital timepieces may be changing the way we talk, at least a little. There’s Bob o’clock (8:08), Big o’clock (8:19), and even Pi o’clock. Also this week, what do you call that gesture with your fingers when you want to make an image larger on a...