A listener in Omaha, Nebraska, says that when he was being particularly inquisitive, his grandmother would exclaim, “You ask more questions than a Philadelphia lawyer!” This term for a particularly shrewd attorney goes all the way back to the late...
Is it a pitched battle or a pitch battle? Originally, a pitched battle was conducted according to traditional rules of warfare, which called for combat in a prearranged time and place. The pitch in this term has to do with positioning, in much the...
A man who owns a parrot says that when people see his bird, they invariably ask the question “Polly wanna cracker?” He wonders about the origin of that psittacine phrase, meaning parrot-like. One of the earliest uses of the phrase so far found is...
