Will remembers coming home from kindergarten sure his class had gone to a pepper alley, though the school event was almost certainly a pep rally. Oddly enough, pepper alley is a real old slang expression: in 19th-century boxing, to be in pepper...
Why do we call a frankfurter a hot dog? It seems an unsettling 19th-century rumor is to blame. Also, if someone quits something abruptly, why do we say they quit cold turkey? This term’s roots may lie in the history of boxing. Plus, a...
Sally from Portage, Wisconsin, wonders why quitting abruptly and without aid is called quitting cold turkey. The phrase is often linked to withdrawal symptoms and the goosebumped skin of a plucked bird, but the chronology points elsewhere. Its...
cutie n. a boxer willing to take, and capable of withstanding, a lot of blows; an unrefined or unorthodox boxer who relies on tricks. Etymological Note: Perhaps from the idea of a “good chin,” meaning the boxer can take a beating to the...
tomato can n. an inferior boxer. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)