Jim in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, says that during childhood games of touch football, he and his friends would count out the required three seconds before rushing as Mississippi one, Mississippi two, Mississippi three. Other ways of counting seconds...
Where’d we get the expression “mind your p’s and q’s”? A Barcelona native wants help understanding exactly what it means, and shares a few other English idioms that caught her up short. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Mind Your...
Gaudy is much older than Antoni Gaudí’s exuberant Barcelona buildings, or his name, so the adjective doesn’t come from the Catalan architect’s name. The showy sense dates to the late 15th century and may be related to the earlier noun gaud, a flashy...