If you’re ever near a sundial, step closer and look for a message. Many sundials bear haunting, poetic inscriptions about the brevity of life. Plus, language development in toddlers: why and how little ones pick up the exclamation Uh-oh...
Samantha, a Latin teacher in Cincinnati, Ohio, is curious about why some people say bread and butter after two people walking together pass by on either side of an object in their path or try to avoid being split. (An example occurs in a 1960...
You may have heard the advice that to build your vocabulary you should read, read, and then read some more – and make sure to include a wide variety of publications. But what if you just don’t have that kind of time? Martha and Grant...
When two people are walking side-by-side holding hands but briefly separate to go around an obstacle on opposite sites, they might say “bread and butter.” This phrase apparently stems from an old superstition that if the two people want...
Chris from Sebastian, Florida, learned the little-piggy toe-counting rhyme with corned beef and cabbage in the third line, while his wife heard roast beef. Most people remember the fourth little piggy eating roast beef, but food substitutions have...
Language serves as a generational marker, leaving speakers of different ages with mutual misunderstandings of pop culture references and idioms. We look at the historical lack of distinction between the words done and finished, clarify the origins...