Mary-Clare recalls that when she was growing up in St. Louis, Missouri, everyone she knew used the term hoosier as a kind of teasing pejorative. If someone did something silly, others would say You’re such a hoosier, the adjective hoozh, or jokingly...
To lose the bubble means “to lose track” or “lose one’s bearings,” and refers to the bubble in an inclinometer on an airplane or ship, much like the bubble in a carpenter’s level. It’s described in detail in...
Andy in Kenosha, Wisconsin, says co-workers call double-time pay for Sundays and certain holidays working double bubble. The expression is known in Britain as rhyming slang for double pay for overtime, holiday work, or after-hours shifts, with the...
dirty adj.— «The secret services create what’s called the “bubble,” a secure area where the candidate is. But once you’re in the bubble you can’t leave. The term for people outside it is “dirty,” meaning that you...
pit lizard n.— «The only thing Stewart enjoys more than a race car and a fight, it seems, is women. Over the course of a race weekend, he’s approached by dozens of them, each more long-legged, doe-eyed and blond than the last. Inside the...
bubble-net n.— «A light wind blew in from the ocean, and the skipper had stopped his boat to watch three 30-ton humpback whales lunging from the waves or circling to make so-called bubble-nets in which they like to catch clouds of small...
