Quiz Guy John Chaneski is puzzling over homographs, words that are spelled the same but have different meanings and sometimes different pronunciations. For example, what two words that are spelled the same are suggested by the following clue? An...
Dawn in Evansville, Indiana, wonders why we dismiss something as nonsense by exclaiming Fiddlesticks! The term arose in the 17th century, most likely because the bow for a fiddle is light, thin, and insubstantial, or in other words, “practically...
A ninth-grade English teacher in Canfield, Ohio, says that when her class reached the climactic scene in The Odyssey where Odysseus bends his mighty bow and kills his wife’s suitors, a student wondered whether the correct phrase is shoot a bow or...
Grant answers a listener’s email question about the meaning of the musical phrase chicky-wah-wah. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Bow-Chicka-Wow-Wow” Martha, we got an interesting voicemail from Misty in upstate New York. She’s...
drain-bow
n.— «“Drain-bows” (Rainbow parlance for slackers) who panhandled and shoplifted.» —“Rainbows came, camped, prayed, left” by Tom Morton Star Tribune (Jackson Hole, Wyoming) Dec. 29, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)